


Schematics [Or, Another Chance]

by FourthFloorWrites



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Constructicons Live AU, M/M, Post-Canon, Time Travel, prowl week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-02-23 00:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23736313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FourthFloorWrites/pseuds/FourthFloorWrites
Summary: Written for Prowl Week! They’ve been construction workers, engineers, soldiers, lab rats, a giant berserker fueled by rage. Time travel bounty hunters is a first for them, sure, but they’ve handled worse, and with the opportunity to get back into Prowl’s graces, they’re down to try pretty much anything.
Relationships: Constructicons/Prowl, Hook/Prowl (Transformers)
Comments: 46
Kudos: 101
Collections: Prowl Week





	1. Crash

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you crimsonseekers for setting this up! I pretty much used this as an excuse to force myself to write the Prowlastator fic I’ve been putting off, so some liberties were taken with the prompts. It’s got plenty of Prowl, though, so if you’re anything like me and/or the Constructicons, it should still be a fun ride.

Prowl wanted them.

He’d _called_ them, and when none had answered because they’d all been deep in recovery stasis, he’d left a message. Short, to the point, crisp with a tone they all recognized immediately:

_Send confirmation upon receipt. Meet at the following coordinates._

Mixmaster swore that somewhere down in stasis dreams, he’d been aware of the moment Prowl had reached out, had felt his spark spin and dance in celebration of its prodigal companion. Long Haul tried to argue that he’d never heard the word _dream_ before they’d been stuck under cover with the humans for all those months, and Bonecrusher had stepped in to defend him. As his teammates squabbled together in the cramped hospital room and Scavenger pretended to still be offline, Hook sent their reply. A single ping, message acknowledged. He wanted badly to ask how Prowl was, tell him the team was excited and ready for whatever he needed from them, but the right words weren’t coming. Besides, Prowl would appreciate the simplicity.

They left that night. Had they any stock in what the doctors or human ( _ew_ ) repair crews had to say, they would have been there several more days, but Prowl’s assessment was the one that mattered. They could get out of their beds, sneak out of the hospital, and transform into a conga line of construction vehicles driving down the road: they were well enough for whatever he asked of them.

Hook led the way, maneuvering them through the hospital parking garage, into alleys, and around the many construction sites flooding the area around where Cybertronians had made landfall. The team had been knocked offline during their battle with Victorion ( _that_ was a rematch to look forward to), so all they knew was that a final, _final_ battle had taken place and someone had dragged them to Earth, where they’d been labeled as ‘victims to Starscream’s self-important delusions’ and tossed in with the rest of the bots who’d ended up mangled, crushed, and torn by the death throes of their planet. Keeping their distance, they saw Cybertronians and humans working alongside one another, building plans for a future in which the two species were able to live side by side. Scavenger even thought it was ‘sweet.’

They never spared it more than a glance, though; Prowl was waiting.

The coordinates took them far from the development, across fields that forced Hook, Bonecrusher, and Long Haul to switch to root mode so their tires didn’t get sucked into the mud, and through forests that snagged their kibble and occasionally required they disentangle each other. Night passed, their path lit by a moon that was little more than a hunk of dead rock, and by day they still wore on, anticipation fueling each step like rough high grade. They reached the mouth of the cave just as the sun reached its crescendo, pushing deep into the darkness below.

They jumped. Mid-air, they strained their optics, searching for their sixth.

There. There he was! Standing just out of the spotlight of the roof, Prowl was almost invisible in the darkness: he’d painted over his white paint with a dark shade of gray, and his biolights had all be covered to make him more believable as an Earth vehicle. His single blue optic was unmistakable, though, both for its color and the way it stared at them, harsh but unreadable, as each member of the team landed in front of him. Dust rose from around their feet and the cave shivered with the impact, and he did not blink, though his gaze shifted to each in turn.

Hook felt his spark trip and wondered if this might be the feeling Mixmaster had been trying to describe.

It was really their Prowl. They were together again.

Hook ran forward, feeling more than hearing the team as they converged around him. Maybe Prowl tried to say something, and maybe they should have responded, but no words came to Hook that would have meant as much as actions. Besides, it would have been too hard to hear as five, then six, t-cogs activated.

There wasn’t even time to savor it. One moment Hook was rolling forward, sliding through his vehicle mode and into Devastator’s component, and then he attempted to connect to Long Haul and everything fell apart.

Pain burned a terrible arc through Hook’s body and he wrenched away from the connection, collapsing onto the floor as his addled processor tried to understand what it had just undergone. The rest of the team crashed down around him, a ragged pile of robots, vehicles, and limbs with Prowl in the center, just starting to sit up. He cradled his helm in one hand, but the glare of his optic pierced through his fingers, targeting Hook and welding him to the spot. Even without the direct connection, Hook’s spark felt the disapproval.

“W-what happened?” Scavenger asked, pushing himself up from where he’d been pinned under Bonecrusher’s blade. The more senior team member transformed and placed a hand on his shoulder, though he too looked to Hook and Prowl for answers.

Hook had none. In their time as a combiner, he had picked up a few tricks they could use to diagnose and bypass glitches, little things here and there that could hold the mesh together until someone more qualified could solve the root of the problem. He’d never been prepared for anything like this, the sting of rejection still flowing through his body and making it hard to perform the usual systems checks he would have had going by now.

“You’re broken,” Prowl said, turning to Bonecrusher. Hook was both grateful and regretful to lose his attention. “Long Haul,” he turned to the one stuck halfway between robot and dump truck, “I received almost no feedback from you. Either your combination circuits have been turned in on themselves, or they’re missing entirely. I suspect the rest of you have similar injuries.”

“Well, what’s it going to take to get us fixed?” Long Haul demanded as he righted himeslf, defensive for having had his own poor repair called out.

“Many things we don’t have,” Prowl said, “least of all expertise. The one mech who fully understands how your bodies work is currently in custody.”

Shockwave was still alive? News to Hook, not that he really cared. He was dealing with more present concerns.

“We can’t combine?” He said it like a question, but it didn’t feel like one.

“No,” Prowl said, “which is perfectly acceptable. I have you how I want you.”

The team perked up, even Mixmaster sitting up from where he’d been lounging on the ground.

“What’s that mean?” Bonecrusher asked.

“The mission I’ve called you here for requires finesse, a clear mind, and ability to stay focused,” Prowl said. “Multiple field runs have now proven that, while combined, I am not capable of such to a degree that is acceptable for any logical hope of success. So, it is to our benefit that we cannot combine.”

“You… don’t want to form Devastator anymore?” Scavenger asked. Bonecrusher’s hand on his shoulder stilled.

“That’s not what he said,” Long Haul snapped, though his optics darted back to Prowl.

“You’re right, Long Haul,” Prowl said, “though you would understand why it’s a complicated question. I…”

Hook leaned in with the rest of his team. He’d so looked forward to being in Prowl’s head again, watching the calculations run down, branches and paths unimaginable to them flowing open at Prowl’s touch. If they couldn’t get that, hearing his thoughts would be the next best thing.

He grimaced, though, and the change in his tone when he started again indicated that whatever he’d meant to say next was going to stay locked away.

“I need you for this mission,” he said instead. “You are the only mechs I can trust with it, and I know you will not take that responsibility lightly. It’s because we have combined that I can give you this confidence.”

“Course, Prowl,” Mixmaster said.

“You can trust us with anything,” Scavenger added.

Prowl’s doorwings twitched up. Hook still wished he knew what that meant, and the familiarity of the feeling was what finally reminded him that _Prowl was back_. Regardless of Devastator, of whatever mission they were about to embark on, that thought stood out in his mind, and he crawled forward so he could touch Prowl’s shoulder, dip his fingers into that fresh gray paint.

“Anything,” he echoed. “We’re here for you.” He would promise nothing he didn’t know he could deliver.

The others followed, enclosing their loose circle around Prowl, who startled at each touch, his gaze whipping around. He stood, dislodging every curious hand, and in the glare of the roof looked like a messiah among his followers. Hook, directly in front of him, squinted up, able to make out only the silhouette of a pointed chevron and doorwings, fanned wide.

“I know,” Prowl said. He stepped over Mixmaster and out of their circle, unfolding from the light and molding himself back into the darkness, where he was once more reduced to a single glowing optic.

“The same way I know that when I tell you this information is top secret,” he went on, “you will know never to reveal it to anyone.”

“We won’t say a thing,” Hook said, standing. The others joined in, echoing Hook’s sentiments as the group rose up, but Prowl’s attention stayed on him. Hook felt the look like it was a blunt object, plunging into his spark, and he accepted the force, embraced it, returning it without any idea of its purposes. He did not look away, not because he was intent on winning whatever game they’d entered into, but because he didn’t know what would happen if he did.

“I know,” Prowl repeated. Hook’s optics, adjusting again to the gloom, were just able to make out the motion he made with one hand.

 _Follow_.

They did.

Prowl led them away from the light, further into the darkness of the cavern. Tucked into one wall was what looked like a terminal amassed with sticky organic matter that threaded together, creating windows that acted as a screen when Prowl powered it on. The team stopped a few steps shy, peering up into uncanny views, except Mixmaster, who strode forward to poke at the vestigial threads hanging off the side.

“This is a time machine.”

Prowl dropped the statement like a bag of bolts. Mixmaster stopped what he was doing to look up at their head. Scavenger jolted.

“You built a time machine?” he asked, awe tilting his helm up and guiding him another step closer, angling to watch Prowl work.

“No. An old… Someone else did,” Prowl said.

“Mesothulas?” Mixmaster guessed.

Hook cringed. Bonecrusher had come across the name accidentally the last time they had combined, but they’d all had to work together to assemble the story, each member offering a scrap of information until something resembling a narrative emerged. Hook had assumed their silent agreement not to mention it to Prowl was enough.

“Not relevant,” Prowl said, proving that it was possible to know a mech’s deepest secrets and still not know how to parse a particular tone of voice. More transparent was the way he reached out and pushed Mixmaster’s curious hands away from the terminal. “I have secured it and assumed full control over the technology. Before I was able to intervene, however, another individual commandeered it with the intention to interrupt our current timeline. Had he been successful, the results would have been catastrophic.”

“So, someone already stopped him?” Hook asked.

“More likely, he just failed,” Prowl said. “Temporal modification is complicated, and without proper training it’s likely he just got himself stuck in a loop somewhere. Still, so long as he remains at large in the timestream, he poses a risk toward spaciotemporal stability. Our mission is to follow him through time and apprehend him, so he can be brought back to Earth to face charges.”

“Against what? Time law?” Scavenger asked.

“Misuse of potentially deadly technology,” Prowl said. “I helped write the bill.”

Hook still wasn’t sure about tone, but that definitely sounded like something approaching pride.

“So, no killing?” Bonecrusher asked.

“No.”

“Damn.”

“No killing, Bonecrusher,” Prowl said. His postured sharpened and he turned to lock optics on the mech, who shrunk back as if to hide behind Long Haul. “If you cannot follow this or any other directive I give you, tell me now, so I can dismiss you and assemble a new task force.”

“It just depends,” Hook said, trying to and finding himself unfortunately successful at drawing Prowl’s attention away. “Is it Spike Witwicky? Or Starscream?” Yeah, yeah, they’d heard the reports, but only someone as gullible as Scoop (who had started inconsolable, turned incoherent when Bonecrusher threatened to punch him back to Cybertron) would believe that fragger would have any interest in staying dead.

“No,” Prowl said, “though that your loyalty is conditional brings down our chance of success by upwards of 20%.”

“No, no, it’s just those two,” Hook insisted, looking to the others.

“You know how it is around that lousy sack of bolts,” Long Haul said, defensive though his tone tried to be accusatory.

“But you say don’t kill, we won’t kill,” Mixmaster added. He took hold of Bonecrusher’s elbow and guided him back in view.

“Yeah,” Bonecrusher said, looking up at Prowl though he so clearly didn’t want to. “Trust us.”

Prowl’s optic stuck to him, then scanned over each member of the team in turn. When Hook felt the gaze fall on him, he did his best to return it _without_ looking like he was trying to challenge Prowl. He wanted to rise to whatever was being asked of him, and no higher.

“I have safeguards in place to hold you to that,” Prowl said, breaking optic contact at last to address the group at large. “I _trust_ that you will not force me to use them.”

Hook nodded with the rest of the team. He knew a threat when he heard it, even a vague one, and he didn’t mind it when it came from Prowl. It was how he got things done, produced results, and with that being one of the many reasons they had come to respect him as their newfound leader, how could they fault him for his methods? A means to an end, that was all Prowl’s precautions were, and Hook was much more invested in the end.

“Once we have captured the target, he will be returned to the present day,” Prowl continued. “He is to be kept in adequate repair, relative to whatever state we find him in. There is a _chance_ he will try to escape, in which case you are permitted to use an appropriate level of _non-lethal_ force.”

“When do we find out who it is, anyway?” Long Haul asked. His voice was almost neutral, but there was a tightness to it that belied his impatience.

“When the information becomes mission-relevant,” Prowl said.

“Hrmph.”

So, it was back to same old, secrets keeping, potentially backstabbing, always plotting Prowl. Still opaque, still keeping his allies in the dark about his unfurling plans and invisible strategies. Hook’s brakes relaxed, letting his wheels rock on their axels. It really was the mech they’d all pulled into their sparks, not the ‘reformed’ glitch everyone in the hospital had been gossiping about.

“Sounds good boss,” he said, shoving at Long Haul with his elbow. He caught a glare for it, but the annoyed growl of the dump truck’s engine quieted to a hum, which was good enough. “When do we start?”

“Now.” Prowl’s fingers flew across the terminal keyboard. “The machine keeps a log of all the points it accesses. Unfortunately, it looks like our suspect had help, as several were logged simultaneously; I assume the intention was to prevent us from finding the correct coordinates. To conduct our search, we’ll have to travel to each one manually.”

“Sounds simple,” Mixmaster said.

“It does,” Prowl agreed, which of course meant, _It’s not._ “Construction of the machine was halted prematurely. It lacks a mechanism to ancho it to the present, which means there is nothing present within the system to guide an individual back once they’ve passed through.”

“What?” Scavenger yelped, stepping back like Prowl had burst into flame. “You mean we’ll be stuck out there?”

“Of course not,” Prowl said. “Why do you think I called on you?”

“You need Devastator?” Bonecrusher guessed.

“We’re a team?” Mixmaster added.

“We already discussed that, Bonecrusher,” Prowl said. He ignored Mixmaster altogether. “Gestalt coding. For better or worse, our sparks are drawn to each other, and the simulations I’ve run suggest that the pull can be felt through the timestream, as well. One mech will stay here, to act as the anchor. When it’s time to come back, the rest of the team should be able to get back relying on that.”

“Not it!”

Attention turned to Long Haul, who was beaming in pride of his quick reflexes. Prowl stopped typing just long enough to turn a glare on him.

“Not—”

“You’ll be taking turns,” Prowl said, interrupting Scavenger. “We have to come back each time to input the new coordinates. We’ll switch off then.”

Had Scrapper been the one in charge, first, they wouldn’t have been attempting anything like this. Second, Long Haul’s brazen declaration would have made him the first to sit out. Instead, Prowl resumed typing, more focused on the intricacies of the time machine than chastising his team for minor infractions. Hook still leveled a disapproving glance at Long Haul, who shrugged it off.

“Preparations are complete,” Prowl announced, turning his back on the terminal to once more address the team. “Bonecrusher will be the anchor for the first run. The rest of you, follow me.”

He led them deeper into the cave, into a pocket the light had almost no hope of reaching. Here, what looked like an empty doorframe stretched far above their heads, visible only by the energy that had started to crackle around its edges as the time machine came online. Pinkish, orangey light spiraled inward, coming to a point at the center of the frame. It looked so familiar to Hook that had it not been for Prowl’s explanation, he would have assumed it was a spacebridge.

“I will lead the way. You will each follow, two seconds behind the person in front of you,” Prowl instructed. “First Hook, then Scavenger, Long Haul, and Mixmaster. The moment you step through this gate, you are to do nothing without my explicit order. If I don’t tell you to walk, you stay still. If your life is in danger, you wait until my go ahead to save yourself. Am I understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Hook said, in unison with the rest of the team.

Prowl looked each one over. He nodded.

“Turn off your comms now,” he said. “We don’t need to risk leaving a signal behind someone might trace. Are there any questions?”

Hook had several, but since none were strictly relevant to the mission, he figured it would be best to hold on for now.

“Very well,” Prowl said. “Hook, follow my steps exactly. Once you reach the end, you are to wait for my signal before you exit the timestream.” A last sweep of the team, and it struck Hook that he didn’t know what Prowl was looking for.

He must have found it, whatever it was, because he turned his back on them and stepped through. They saw his silhouette for just a moment before it was swallowed whole by the light.

Hook stared at the space that had once been Prowl.

“…two-on-thousand,” he heard Bonecrusher murmur.

Well, he could take a hint when it was given. Hook chanced a glance back at the others before he stepped in, not that he really needed to. All he saw were the faces of his team, and they were familiar to him as his own spark. It was up ahead that was unknown, fascinating, slightly dangerous, so Hook strode forward into the light, following wherever it was Prowl led.


	2. High

It wasn’t like a space bridge.

Hook could still walk and felt the weight of his frame, so he assumed the timestream must have a floor, but it was not defined in any way. Instead, all he could see was lemony peach light that expanded and dissolved like the life cycle of crystals. Even dialed down to minimum sensitivity, it hurt his optics to look at, to say nothing of the soundless ringing in his audials. Fractals bloomed around him, dazzling his optics, but he swore they grew _in_ him as well: the air was _crunchy_ , resisting every step forward while Hook hurried to keep from being left behind.

Everything was an effort; the momentum of his spark spinning in its chamber almost hurt for the effort it took. So much of his focus was pulled to the feeling that he did not see exactly how the exit opened in front of him. All he knew was the burst of energy he got from relief as he plunged through, relishing the feeling like smooth energon along one’s intake.

A hand landed on his plating and tried to shove him back.

“I told you to wait for my signal,” Prowl hissed. He retracted his hand but stayed close, leaning into Hook’s space like he was trying to intimidate. For the first time, Hook realized their leader had returned to his old frame and was one again small than the rest of them.

“Sorry, Prowl,” Hook said, holding his ground. The only place for him to go was back into the timestream, and he wasn’t ready to bear that just yet. “That place made it hard to think.”

“That’s not good enough, Hook,” Prowl said. “If a slight bit of discomfort means you can’t follow my orders, how can I expect you to—”

Like a crashing wave, three more mechs piled into what Hook had just realized was actually a rather tight space. Trapped between Long Haul and a wall, he noted that they were at the dead end of an unlit hallway that extended about a hundred meters. Open archways, facing each other, were spaced evenly down the entire length. It appeared to be Cybertronian style, but since Prowl hadn’t told them what time period they were coming to, that could have meant anything. It wasn’t purple, so Hook guessed it didn’t belong to any Decepticons.

“So what do we do first?” Mixmaster asked. Hook couldn’t actually see him, on account of Long Haul filling up most of the hallway, but his voice, the highest of the crew, carried through fine.

“You, Mixmaster, are going to wait here,” Prowl said. Somehow, he had managed to avoid the tide of construction vehicles and stood apart from them, arms crossed and doorwings flicking. “We need someone to stay and guard the rift, and make sure the stream stays open. If you had followed my instructions, I would have been able to tell you that before—”

“Can I?” Long Haul asked, drawing Prowl’s attention. His expression remained inscrutable, but his annoyed slouch straightened into something more… something.

“Explain,” he said.

“Just, I have to crane my neck just standing here, and it doesn’t look like it opens up much further. Doesn’t feel like crawling around is a worthy use of my skills.”

Hook was convinced Prowl was going to refuse on principle, so he was surprised at the eventual nod.

“Your assessment is reasonable,” he said. “Long Haul will stay here. Mixmaster, you’ll be accompanying us for the survey. We’re looking for any evidence that our fugitive has been here.”

There was some shuffling that had to be done to allow Mixmaster to squeeze past Long Haul. As soon as he was able to peer around his largest teammate, Mixmaster’s optics flashed in an expression Hook was dangerously familiar with.

“Oh! The lab!” He shoved further, suddenly ignorant of the mechs he was squished in with as his gaze darted around the space.

“You picked this up from my memories?” Prowl guessed.

“Of course,” Mixmaster said. “You were so brilliant here, how could I resist?”

Then, as though familiarity equated permission, he continued past Prowl to explore further into the facility. Hook stared at his wayward teammate, but Prowl, despite stepping out of the way, was not so stunned.

“Mixmaster!” he snapped. “I just finished telling you, you’re to _wait for instruction!_ ”

“Find the guy, don’t kill,” Mixmaster said, waving him off. He reached an archway and peered into the room beyond, his optics flashing again. “When are we Prowl? Is that the _aqua fortis_ putty?” And then he disappeared into the room beyond.

“Mixmaster!” Prowl went after the distracted alchemist, leaving Hook and Scavenger alone, glancing to each other.

“What do we do now?” Scavenger asked.

Hook didn’t know. Whatever Prowl wanted them to do was probably the right answer, but he didn’t know what that specifically was, anymore.

“He told us not to move unless he tells us to,” Hook said.

“But we were also supposed to wait for instructions,” Scavenger said.

“Yes?” Hook didn’t understand why that was an argument.

“How can he tell us what to do if he’s in some other part of the building and no one has their comms on?”

Maybe Scavenger had a point. And furthermore, what if Prowl got into trouble? What if Mixmaster led him all the way to the end of the complex and then their mysterious criminal got the jump on them? Prowl’s delicate armor wasn’t built to sustain a heavy attack, not like the rest of the team’s was. Mixmaster could provide some protection, but distracted as he was, Hook could see someone grabbing Prowl, hauling him into the shadows, and Mixmaster not even looking up from whatever superweapon had taken his attention.

He knew what Scavenger was trying to do, but that didn’t stop it from working.

“He needs us,” Hook said. “Come on.”

They followed the direction Prowl and Mixmaster had gone. Unfortunately, they were not in the next room, which housed three desks covered in all manner of supplies and large vats in which something slimy writhed and bubbled. They shied through, Scavenger keeping his eyes on the floor, and in the next room were greeted by their teammates, one of whom had climbed up a derelict ladder to peer inside one of several hundred cubby holes shielded in the wall.

“Prowl, these ones are almost to maturity!” he said, delighted.

“And they’re to stay that way,” Prowl said, standing at the base of the ladder and staring up with disdain. “Mesothulas reported exactly one break in while he was stationed here, and it turned out to be a retrorat that had snuck into my ship. Nothing ever went missing, and since I disabled the paradox drives in the time machine, nothing will, so you’re just wasting our time by considering the possibility.”

“The mission, Mixmaster?” Hook reminded him.

Joint disapproval grounded the overstimulated scientist. He looked down at them from his perch, then back to the curiosity, his fingers thrumming around the frame of the ladder.

“There’s so much I could do with them,” he whined. “The corrosive properties alone would—”

“You don’t, Mixmaster,” Prowl said. “It’s what time has already dictated.”

Even then, Mixmaster took another moment to consider before his shoulders drooped and he relented, sliding back down the ladder and returning to his teammates.

“Good,” Prowl said. “Now that we’re back on track, we can go over tasks. Hook, you’re to—”

_Bang!_

It wasn’t a gunshot, but Hook’s combat systems came online anyway, senses expanding as he rapidly scanned the room for the culprit. That’s how he was able to capture it when Scavenger toppled to the ground.

“Scav!” Mixmaster yelped.

“Dammit,” Prowl grumbled.

Hook’s distressed run to his teammate’s side was thwarted by two pairs of hands, one on his arm and the other digging uncomfortably into his back kibble.

“Nuh-uh,” Mixmaster said, drawing Hook back by the elbow.

“The slag, Mix—“

“He’s right, Hook,” Prowl said. “Don’t get too close.”

“Close to _what_?”

“That,” Mixmaster said, pointing in the general area Scavenger had just been occupying. “Do you see the sediment?”

When Hook stopped trying to look everywhere at once and forced himself to focus on the spot Mixmaster pointed out, he found he could see something: hovering in the air, a yellowish cloud of what could have been powder or vapor. It twisted in the minute air currents of the room, dancing to the rhythm of their smallest movements.

“Mesothulas kept all sorts of volatile materials out in the open,” Prowl said, his sharp jerk on Hook’s sensitive kibble enough to pull the larger mech back a step. “It looks like Scavenger set something off.”

“Is he okay?” Hook asked. Scavenger was splayed on the floor, optics offline, though the sound of his engine indicated he was still functioning.

Mixmaster shrugged.

“Don’t know what it was,” he said.

“So, find out!” Hook didn’t understand why the two were so calm, or why he was the only one obviously concerned with their teammate’s wellbeing.

“We will as soon as you relax so we can get the vent filters,” Prowl said.

Hook relented, forcing himself to calm enough that Prowl was able to let go and retreat to a supply closet.

Mixmaster idly traced circles on Hook’s arm. His fingers were blunt, edges of his armor worn down from a lifetime of playing with acids and explosives and whatever existed in between. Hook let himself lean into the touch; silent assurance passed between them.

They separated when Prowl returned, and he and Mixmaster set to packing their vents with filtration foam, pressing until the blades bit into the soft material. Hook offered to assist Prowl, having done it enough for Mixmaster, but was brushed off, so he sat back to watch as they pressed the expanses and kneaded the edges into place. It would have been a privileged show, if he hadn’t been thinking about Scavenger’s state.

Mixmaster finished first and went to Scavenger, arranging his limbs into a more neutral position.

“Hey Scav, how you feeling?” he asked. He waited a beat, then announced, “Functional. Offline.”

“From the blast, or the material?” Prowl asked.

“Honestly? It’s Scav; he probably just scared himself into stasis.”

“It’s happened,” Hook said. He didn’t want to dismiss too soon the possibility that his teammate was hurt, but Prowl ought to know.

“Can you bring him online?” Prowl asked.

“Yeah, sure,” Mixmaster said, reaching for Scavenger’s helm. “Just pinch a few wires, should do the trick. Just so you know, though, you might want to step back. Potentially volatile material mixed with active energon processing is—”

“Okay, stop,” Hook said.

Mixmaster paused and looked to Prowl.

Prowl sighed.

“Fine, yes, stop,” he said. “How long would it take to identify the substance?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Mixmaster said. He stepped away from Scavenger and to the lab bench he’d been looking at, covered in a clutter of equipment and materials. It was such a mess, Hook couldn’t even imagine what experiments had been taking place: it looks like someone had taken a pile of random scrap and dumped it all there.

“Mesothulas’ notes are in here somewhere,” Prowl said, eyeing the piles that extended throughout the room. Hook reflected that Scavenger would have been delighted to be put to task sorting through a place like this, and a few image captures would be just the thing to get him to stick to protocol in the future.

“Okay?” Mixmaster said. With a bare finger he swiped some of the settled dust off an empty test tube, raising it to his optics. “Gimme five.”

Hook wasn’t really able to follow the barrage of tests that occurred over the next 4.96 minutes. Mixmaster constantly seemed to have each hand on different equipment, his optics swinging from one, to another, to a third he had set up to run concurrently. Occasionally he would blurt something, a grunt of disappointment or a sharp demand, “Slide,” that he would swiftly follow by delivering to himself.

“Fascinating!” he announced, like a timer on an oven.

“The results?” Prowl asked.

“Derived from high intensity energon crystals, but the chemical makeup has been altered to interface directly with Cybertronian circuitry,” Mixmaster said.

Hook didn’t know how he’d figured that out from a few standard laboratory tests.

“Is it killing him?” That was all he wanted to know.

“Oh, no.” Mixmaster said. “He can come online any time.”

Prowl strode forward, leaning down to Scavenger’s prone form while Mixmaster continued to delight himself with a few more experiments. He leaned down and for a moment, Hook thought he was going for a medical port, but then he almost seemed to pinch one of the wrist wires.

Scavenger’s optics fans whirred to life and his optics flashed on. He shot up, optics darting around the room.

“Who—where—”

“This way.” With minimal grace, Prowl hauled Scavenger to his feet and led him away from the hazy work area. As soon as they were within safe distance, he shoved him to Hook, who just managed to keep Scavenger from sprawling across the floor again. He was alive and online, for sure, but the glow of his optic band was dim, and when he looked up at Hook it was like he didn’t understand what he was seeing.

“Heey, Hook,” he said, sloppily batting Hook’s hands away when he tried to inspect closer.

“I need to check you for damage,” Hook said.

“Nah, I’m good,” Scavenger insisted, his head tossing back and then rolling forward.

Hook grabbed him by the helm and pulled him forward, shining a light into optics.

“Scrap. He’s overcharged.”

“Something like that,” Mixmaster said, not looking up from his experiments.

Prowl sighed and pinched his nasal ridge.

“Get him back to Long Haul.”

“Yes, sir,” Hook said, sagging under more than just Scavenger’s limp weight. They hadn’t even made it to the point of receiving instructions, much less proving to Prowl that they were a capable and dependable team. Fighting the order would only further prove the point, though, so he shifted Scavenger’s weight and trudged back the way they’d come.

He expected Mixmaster and Prowl to follow, but he didn’t hear footsteps. In fact, just as he was stepping out of the room, he heard Prowl’s voice quietly ask, “So, how did you come to that conclusion?”

“Oh, the residue reminded me of something I tried to put together a while ago,” Mixmaster said, too involved in his own musings to realize he had Prowl’s undivided attention. Whether for curiosity’s sake or jealousy’s, Hook found himself paused, just out of sight.

“For recreational purposes?”

“No, mine was more designed for frying Autobot neural circuits,” Mixmaster said. “Could never quite figure it out, but it looks like Mesothulas made it possible.”

“Yes. He had a talent for that.”

Prowl’s tone… again, Hook couldn’t place it. He didn’t have the words to describe the hush, the gentle roll of the vocalizer that in any other mech could have turned into a tremble.

“Can you describe his experiments to me?” Mixmaster asked.

Against Hook’s shoulder, Scavenger giggled again, and Hook quietly stroked a hand over his helm to shush him.

“That won’t be necessary.” Prowl’s voice had changed. It was harder now, closer to the way he gave orders, though Hook didn’t know what had caused the shift.

“But, I’m interested,” Mixmaster said.

“You already took what you wanted from my memories.”

Scavenger lolled his head against Hook’s shoulder and played his fingers along Hook’s chestplate. He said something that sounded like, “Purple,” but could have been an incidental blat of his vocalizer.

“That’s just data,” Mixmaster said. “The organization system for your memories is as polished as the Iacon research libraries were before we burned them down, but it doesn’t prioritize a whole lot. I don’t know which ones you liked the best.”

Prowl mimicked Scavenger, making a sound that was not words. Hook squeezed the mech tight against himself, making Scavenger squirm like a squishy.

“Hoook,” he grumbled.

Hook squeezed with more intention, but Scavenger wouldn’t take the hint.

“St’p it,” he mumbled.

“That will not be necessary,” Prowl repeated, more force behind it. “Get that cleaned up, as close as you can get it to whatever state Scavenger found it in. We’re leaving.”

Mixmaster sighed, but Hook heard the burner turn off and a rag start to wipe down all the surfaces that had been decorated in the five minutes of mayhem. Knowing he only had moments left, Hook tried to get Scavenger moving again, which was both helped and hindered by the latter’s discovery that he had unimpeded access to touching Hook.

“Mesothulas is a genius,” Mixmaster said.

“Maybe he was,” Prowl said. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“No, it does.”

Hook did not know why Prowl did not respond, what sort of silent exchange might have taken place in the room just beyond. He lugged Scavenger back through the room and up the hall.

Getting through the time portal was even worse while supporting a barely coherent teammate. Hook groaned as he finally pushed through, dropping Scavenger’s body on the platform.

“What happened?” Bonecrusher asked, approaching the portal from where it looked like he’d been lounging near the terminal. “Where’s Mixmaster?”

“Here,” their wayward alchemist said as he stepped around Hook, still too worn out to get out of the way. “Miss me?”

“Mixmaster.” The four sober mechs swiveled to attention as Prowl stepped into the present. “You disobeyed orders, questioned my authority, and put one of your teammates in danger. Do you understand that?”

“Mix didn’t do anything,” Scavenger slurred into Hook’s shoulder. “It was just me… I just…” He seemed to lose his train of thought, his gaze drifting up to the ceiling.

“I understand, Prowl,” Mixmaster said. Now that he didn’t have the excitement of another mad scientist to distract him, he seemed more aware of where he was and the consequences of his actions, though Hook doubted that he actually felt guilty about any of it.

It had been nice for a little while to imagine this woud work, that Prowl would combine with them again and they would all be together the way they were supposed to. His shoulder was aching and he wanted nothing more than to ease Scrapper down to the floor, but he could put it off until after Prowl kicked them out.

“You’re staying behind for the next mission,” Prowl said. “And many more after, if I don’t see an improvement in your attitude. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Prowl.”

Hook hiccupped, the sound bouncing off the cave walls and causing Prowl’s doorwings to twitch. Their head had definitely implied earlier that they would be kicked off the mission if they failed him, but maybe he was feeling the draw, too? Was he really giving them a second chance? Hook couldn’t question it. Here was another opportunity for them to prove themselves to Prowl, and he would not give it up for anything. He hefted Scavenger up, trying to give the impression that they were both standing at attention.

“So, when to next, boss?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-chapter disclaimer: I've never been high and recreational dispensaries were deemed non-essential ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	3. Law/Crime

Third walk through the timestream: wasn’t getting any easier. Prowl was waiting for them somewhere in the past, and Hook had to keep reminding himself of that while every step felt like his frame was betraying him. He was behind Long Haul this time, an experiment to see if another member of the team would be better at following Prowl’s first instruction. Bonecrusher followed him. Scavenger had passed out once they’d gotten him propped against a wall, and Mixmaster had promised to use his downtime to find a way to reverse the effects of the powder. Though he only had a small assortment of chemicals on hand to work with, Hook had no doubt he would put something together.

He startled when he bumped into Long Haul. Again, he’d withdrawn so much that he hadn’t noticed the point at which he was supposed to stop. Patience was hard to define in a place where time didn’t strictly move forward, so Hook could be forgiven if he was in short supply. As soon as Long Haul started moving again, Hook followed him, feeling Bonecrusher close behind.

They emerged on a rooftop, under a bank of stars. Underneath them, a vibrant, writhing, pre-war Iacon pulsed with nightlife. This wasn’t a sight Hook had ever personally witnessed, though he might have once helped lay the foundations for something like it.

“This is 4th cycle 501,” Prowl said as the team gathered around, snapping their attentions back to him whenever they started to drift toward the distracting collection of lights and sounds down below them. “Nominus is Prime, the Clampdown is in effect… Am I forgetting anything?”

“Decepticons are growing,” Long Haul said.

“This would’ve been before Scrapper got us recruited, though, so Megtron’s not building arenas yet,” Hook added. “Autobots are on guard, but no one’s declaring war yet.”

Bonecrusher didn’t contribute anything. Whenever Prowl wasn’t the one talking, his attention drifted outward, to the sparkling lights and distant signs of life. Like Prowl, he was a little hard to read sometimes, but the steadiness of his movements indicated that this was no trip down memory lane: he was surveying, searching for any possible danger. Prowl was doing something similar, actually, though Hook didn’t dare to assume he knew Prowl’s intentions.

“Why did our guy put himself on the roof?” Hook asked. “He a flier?”

“He’s—”

“Hey, Prowl, isn’t that you?”

Bonecrusher’s effort had paid off. Standing at the edge of the roof, he pointed down to the ground level entrance. The others joined at his sides, just soon enough to watch Prowl and some other mech enter the building beneath their pedes. Hook glanced to Prowl, whose optic had brightened in interest.

“Oh,” he said, “I see why he might’ve come here.”

“What’d you do?” Long Haul asked.

“ _I_ was performing my function,” Prowl said. “Tu—Chromedome and I did everything as per regulation. That an incident occurred doesn’t—”

“Clowndome?” Long Haul interrupted. “What were you covering his aft for? You’re better than him.”

Hook felt a thrill of alarm as Prowl’s doorwings sagged down. He couldn’t let another mission go sour, not when they’d barely gotten this second chance. Furious at his teammate for potentially jeopardizing it (even if he wasn’t entirely sure what Long Haul had done wrong), Hook took advantage of their usual conflict resolution strategy: he slugged Long Haul in the arm.

“Hey!” Long Haul yelped, grabbing at the shallow dent that had formed. “What was that for?”

“Don’t say stupid slag,” Hook warned.

“The frag are you talking about?”

“Behave,” Prowl snapped, doorwings flaring back up above his head. Even if Hook didn’t know exactly what they were trying to say, the attempt at intimidation was obvious enough. It didn’t really work, not when the size difference between them was still so apparent, but both mechs stepped away from each other and turned their attention to Prowl. He huffed and straightened.

“To answer your earlier question, Hook,” he said, “our target does possess flight capabilities, though he is not especially fast. If we move now, there is a chance we can catch up with him. Hook, you’ll come with me for a perimeter check. Long Haul, Bonecrusher, you’ll stay here and keep watch over the timestream. Do whatever it takes to keep anyone else from finding it, but keep in mind that I am currently in the building and have no memory of encountering you this night. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” they said. Hook thought he heard Long Haul grumble something, but since Prowl didn’t comment on it, he decided it wouldn’t be his place to, either.

“Can you at least tell us what we’re looking for?” Long Haul asked.

“He flies,” Bonecrusher offered.

“He’s green,” Prowl said.

Long Haul and Bonecrusher took up positions to either side of the portal, the latter with more earnest enthusiasm than the former. Prowl stood back to look at them once, like a general inspecting his troops, then turned his back on them to lead Hook to the opposite edge of the roof. The alley here was narrow, allowing them to leap across. As they started to maneuver the rooftops this way, Hook distracted himself from his vertigo by thinking about anyone he knew who was green and had something against the flow of time.

“It’s not that Liege Maximal guy, is it?” he asked. “Hated him.”

“He’s dead,” Prowl said.

“Yeah, and? Seems like everything that happens is because of some guy that was supposed to be dead,” Hook said, watching as his teammate surveyed the area around them before deciding another direction to head in.

“You mean Shockwave.”

“Yeah, and also Optimus Prime, Metroplex, Megatron.”

“Hm.” Prowl peered down from the edge of one building, as though judging the distance to the ground.

“What?” Hook was pretty sure Prowl was thinking something. It would be generous to say that meant he was learning anything about his teammate, since Prowl was always thinking about things the others wouldn’t get to know anything about, but the noise he made suggested that _something_ significant was going on in that processor.

“Your statement could almost make someone mistakenly believe you were anything less than jubilant when Megatron returned,” Prowl said.

Hook took a moment to make sure he understood Prowl’s meaning before he responded.

“You were in our head,” Hook said. “You know it was more complicated than that. We had a bad thing with the Autobots, and no matter how we felt about Megs, he was our ticket out from under them.”

“No loyalty to the Decepticon cause, though?” Prowl said.

“Eh.” Hook shrugged. He’d had this conversation with plenty of Decepticons before and had become comfortable with his level of commitment to Megatron’s fanaticisms. Sharing it again with Prowl, whatever he considered himself nowadays, wasn’t stressful.

“Mixmaster’s into it,” he said. “Can’t stand organics, and that means Bonecrusher’s on board, too. But for the rest of us, it just started as another job. I think Scrapper read Megatron’s big book before he got us hired, but it’s not like he ever told us about it.”

“Not a conversationalist?”

Hook didn’t know why Prowl was curious about any of this, but he was delighted and didn’t want it to stop.

“Nah, it’s just that he was like you,” Hook said, “everything was always about—”

Prowl grabbed Hook’s shoulder and shoved him down, until he was almost flattened on the roof.

“Prowl!”

“Shush!”

A silent finger pointed out, across the rooftops. Silhouetted against the lights of the living city and the stars above was a figure, standing still, looking out across this small slice of the planet.

“Is that our guy?” Hook whispered.

“No,” Prowl said. “That’s Orion Pax.”

Hook felt the tide of revulsion he’d become so used to over the years.

“Ugh, Optimus? What’s he doing here?”

“Doing exactly what he’s supposed to,” Prowl said. “When a Decepticon attacks the residential building, he’ll jump down and neutralize the threat.”

“When a—Prowl!” Hook’s systems revved at the threat to his teammate.

“Be _quiet_ , Hook.”

He forced his engine to calm down and dropped his voice to a hush again.

“You never said you would be in danger.”

“I’m not, in a determined sense,” Prowl said. “Orion does his job and I survive the war, remember? Anything that happened prior to our meeting doesn’t concern you.”

In a logical way, yeah, sure, Hook understood what Prowl meant. He didn’t understand, though, how Prowl thought he would be comfortable sitting here, several blocks away, knowing that his teammate was about to be attacked. Even with combat routines locked down, he felt like he might bust out of his plating for all the effort it was taking to keep himself in place.

“Yeah, of course,” he managed to say, “but when the others hear you being shot at—”

“Hey!”

They swiveled around, following the sound of the voice back to the rooftop they’d come from. Though hard to see from a distance and in the dark, both were able to make out Long Haul. Impressive for his stature and his natural steadiness, it was a shock to watch him as he struggled to grapple with the much smaller Bonecrusher, who was apparently doing everything in his power to fling himself off the side of the roof. And, by the looks of it, that was a lot of power.

“Let go of me, Prowl’s in danger!” Bonecrusher roared. He broke free of Long Haul’s grip and sprinted forward, before he was flattened again by Long Haul’s tackle.

“We can’t,” Long Haul said, “Prowl will—”

“Who cares?” Bonecrusher demanded. “Let me—”

“Halt!”

The whole team, two on the original roof and two watching from afar, froze as a familiar voice traveled across the rooftops. Bonecrusher used the moment of surprise to get his legs underneath him and start to physically lift Long Haul off himself. As the surprised dump truck was tossed aside, Bonecrusher once more made a break for it, only to be intercepted by Orion Pax.

When the officer spoke, his deep voice was too low for either Hook or Prowl’s audials to pick up. Twice, Bonecrusher tried to dodge around him, but a firm hand would stop and put him back in his place. After just a couple minutes of talking, there was a sound of gunfire, glass shattering, and Orion had whipped around to look down and behind.

Then, he was gone.

“Did he just—”

“Yes,” Prowl said with an air of resignation. “He was fond of that sort of thing.”

Hook followed him back to Long Haul and Bonecrusher, who had scooted back to the edge of the roof to watch the action. They both turned at the sound of footsteps; Bonecrusher jumped.

“Prowl,” he said, “how did you get up—”

“Both of you, up, now,” Prowl said, ignoring the question. “We’re leaving.”

“Already?” Hook asked.

“There’s no sign of our target and even if he had been here, you’ve caused enough of a disturbance that we’ll be unlikely to find him not,” Prowl said. “Bonecrusher, you will have time to explain yourself when we return to base.”

“Not that much to explain, Prowl,” Bonecrusher said. “You were in danger. I had to protect you.”

“I was in danger _in the past_ ,” Prowl said, the glare of his single optic narrowing as he pointed an accusing finger up at the berserker.

“Well, yeah, but—”

“No,” Prowl said. “It is not your job to reason or make decisions. You leave that to me. Regardless of what the situation is, my authority comes first.”

Hook glanced at Bonecrusher, but still his stance gave away little. He didn’t know how to explain to Prowl that this was what BC _did_. He was the protector, the one who always had everyone’s backs. Even if Prowl asked if he understood, and even if BC said yes, he wouldn’t think twice about it if the same situation came up later and there was no one else to help.

“Follow,” Prowl commanded, as he led the way into the timestream. Long Haul waited the two seconds, then followed, but Hook lagged at Bonecrusher’s side, waiting until they were alone to speak up.

“What’d Optimus have to say?” he asked.

“Wanted to give me a citation for ‘disturbing the peace,’” Bonecrusher said. “Told me to wait here so he could finish filling out the form.”

The cant of his helm and the glint in his optic band told Hook exactly what he thought of that.


	4. Sensory

Scavenger apologized probably somewhere around a hundred times. Hook couldn’t keep track of them all, and even Prowl must have been satiated, because he gave up on his lecture halfway through and kept it to a crisp, “Do as you’re ordered.”

“Mixmaster and Scavenger, you’re coming through this time,” Prowl announced as he loaded up the terminal with their next set of coordinates. “Long Haul, you’re anchor.”

“What? Why me?”

“Because that’s your order,” Prowl said.

“Bonecrusher’s the one who caused problems the last time, shouldn’t he be the one stuck behind?” Long Haul’s shoulders were squared and his plating flaring. Though he resented the reaction, Hook could understand where it came from: after being put on guard duty twice in a row, their resentful transporter was probably starting to feel like his skills were being undervalued.

“I’m the leader of this mission,” Prowl said, turning to stare Long Haul down. “If you take issue with my command style, you’re welcome to leave.”

“I’m not gonna do that and you know it,” Long Haul snapped.

“Precisely.” Prowl turned back to the console, as though that constituted a satisfying end to the argument.

Hook tried to get a steadying hand on Long Haul’s shoulder but was pushed off, the larger mech stalking away. Not that there was far to go. The present had been confined to the space of the cave they stood in, their only indication that real time was passing the changing light that filtered in through the ceiling. Their chronometers had fallen out of sync with each journey, but it was pointless to reset them every time, when Prowl had them going back in just minutes after they returned.

He finished punching in the coordinates, the timestream shimmered to life, and the team lined up behind him. Only now, Prowl didn’t bother to specify the order they would travel in. He took the lead, Scavenger slipped in front of Hook, Bonecrusher and Mixmaster lagging behind, and a silent agreement was passed not to bring it up as an issue. If Prowl was relaxing his regulations a bit, that could only mean fewer opportunities for them to mess up.

Part of Hook wondered if they should take a break soon, give everyone a chance to fuel up and ease off, maybe even have a chance to get caught up on everything they had missed. That’s how they’d done it with Scrapper, but he stopped that line of thought before the pang in his spark got to be too strong. This wasn’t the right time to bring it up, anyway, so he put his focus to keeping his processor under control as he stepped into the timestream.

He did a better job of it this time, practice having made him more accustomed to the feeling of time rejecting their intrusion. He reached forward at once point and took Scavenger’s hand, keeping him from rushing ahead like he had the first time, and in response felt a squeeze that held until they nearly reached the exit. This time, Hook could see what they were approaching, but the only thing he was able to make out was that it was dark. Not like the cave, though. There was something familiar about it.

At Prowl’s signal, he let Scavenger slip free of his hand, then followed shortly after, emerging among the roots of another long-lost Cybertronian city.

“An abandoned sector?” Hook said as he peered around. Compared to their last stop, the streets here were barren, lights only distantly visible through the breaks between buildings. Someone turned on their headlights and illuminated the building across the way, its large doors slightly ajar.

“What would the time killer want with this place?” Scavenger asked as he crept closer.

“The _what_?”

Scav grinned at Prowl.

“The time killer,” he repeated. “We’ve got to call this guy something, don’t we?”

“He hasn’t _killed_ anyone.”

“He’s Cybertronian?”

“Yes, but—”

“There you go! Killer.”

“It’s got a nice ring to it,” Hook said.

“No, it doesn’t,” Prowl said. “Come up with something better. Bonecrusher, you’re on guard duty. Scavenger, Mixmaster, Hook, with me.”

The named mechs followed Prowl into the nearest building, staring up at tall ceilings that only served to offer more room to an incredible collection of junk. Scrapped sheet metal, rusted beams, and all manner of useless spare parts filled the space, a warehouse that had been made to a cheap and convenient dump for some unofficial industrial venture. The whole thing rung familiar to Hook, but it was the rumble of and engine in need of a tune-up that caused his processor to alight in recognition.

“Wh—seriously? Since when do you all show up early?”

Hook whirled around, his spark spinning with way too many emotions to process at once.

“Scrapper?” Mixmaster choked out.

“But no Long Haul. Great. I guess we can just start building the arena on _top_ of the scrap piles, that’ll stand just fine.” Scrapper wasn’t paying any attention to the mechs he was addressing, too wrapped up in his planning and calculations to notice anything amiss. The casual ignorance of a mech who was so profoundly gifted in his ability to notice details struck an emotion in Hook that he did not have the words to describe, and he found himself stepping forward.

“Scrapper—”

“Scavenger, stop standing around,” he said, possibly ignoring Hook, though more likely failing to notice him. “I need you to start sorting through this mess and figure out what’s useful. Mixmaster, help him excavate however he needs; your skills aren’t going to be any use until we get this cleared and Bonecrusher gets here to set up the foundation. Hook, you review the blueprints last night?”

“Of course, sir,” Hook said, forcing himself out of his stupor and back into the role of the perfectionist second-in-command he had played for four million years. The changeover was so natural, he forgot he was lying.

“Start laying out the perimeter. Give us a sense of the space we’re working with,” Scrapper ordered. “Once you’ve got that, I’ll need your help with the fine details, make sure everything’s to Megatron’s specifications. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Scrapper turned and walked off, optics fixed to the datapad he’d walked in with. Hook stared at his frame as it retreated, taking in the way his legs bent and arms swung, the cant his helm adopted when he was deep in thought. The last time he’d seen Scrapper functioning had seemed like such a non-event, it hadn’t occurred to him to savor it like this. Now, every frame was saved to his memory, copied to multiple folders and heavily encrypted.

There were so many things he wished he could do to that frame. But, if they really were all the way back to setting up gladiator arenas, then the team wasn’t really a _team_ yet. There were rumors about Scrapper and Long Haul, evidence of Mixmaster and Bonecrusher’s late night ‘science projects,’ and a few nights spent fantasizing ceaselessly, but nothing at all like what would come later. Hook, he reminded himself, wasn’t even the second yet. At this point in the timeline, he’d only recently been assigned to Scrapper’s crew and made up for it with a kiss-up habit he was still struggling to break.

He wished there was time; the things he wanted to do to that frame. Scrapper disappeared through the far door, and Hook made to follow him, reclaim lost days he’d never imagined would be significant enough to miss. A hand caught his arm, he turned to Mixmaster’s optics, and was reminded of their reality.

“Prowl says we should go,” Mixmaster said.

“Oh.” Hook didn’t remember setting his vocalizer that low. “Where is he?”

“I’ve got him,” Scavenger said. He’d been leaned over a pile, sensitive digger arm extended in from of him, now revealing that Prowl had been hiding beneath it. “It’s good we got Scrapper while he was still in planning mode. I don’t know if this will work again if he comes back.”

“It’s not worth the risk,” Prowl said. “You’re all compromised and there is no sign of the target, so we’re going back.”

He led the way back out of the building. Mixmaster complied without much fuss, surprisingly eager to get back to the time portal, but Scavenger lagged, glancing over his shoulder to the place Scrapper had disappeared to.

Hook paused to wait for his teammate.

“Hey, c’mon, Scav,” he said, offering out a hand. It was all he could do to close the distance, because he knew if he went to Scavenger right then, he might not be able to stop his legs from carrying him all the way back.

Still, the mech hesitated.

“Is there a problem?” Prowl asked, back at his side.

“N-no, Prowl, uh, boss,” Hook said, trying to hide how the mech’s reappearance had startled him.

“It’s _him_ ,” Scavenger said, with a reverence that he usually saved for just one mech at a time. He glanced back at Prowl, optics bright with something. Realization? Hope? Primus, don't let it be that. “Prowl, could we—”

In two strides, so quick and silent he might have teleported to Scavenger’s side, Prowl pushed himself into the mech’s space, silencing him with presence alone.

“No,” he said, his voice the blade that cut off Scavenger’s fragile buds of hope. “No. Scavenger, on this day, four million years in your past, Scrapper had a normal day. He worked with you and the rest of the team, erected Megatron’s next arena, and forgot about it among every other day he spent doing the exact same thing. He did not get removed from his place in time, nor did he mention ever encountering a different version of you. This is how things happened, and we can’t change it, no matter how badly we—you want to.”

He was leaning far into Scavenger’s space, closer than Hook had known he was capable of. And although the display was apparently meant to be domineering, show that Prowl was the one in control, there was something else to it, captured in the way Prowl’s hand reached up and touched, so gently, the excavator’s wilting backhoe.

“That’s four million years ago. More recently than that, Spike Witwicky tracks him down, isolated in an Earth construction lot, and kills him. We can’t undo that, either. It’s not ours to change.”

Scavenger’s whole frame perked up under the surprise touch, subconsciously tilting his stick into Prowl’s hand. Hook watched Prowl’s gray fingers stroke with surprising care, a jealousy coiling in his spark that he was only able to tamp down with the knowledge that Scavenger would be delighted to share the memory when they next combined.

Prowl said something else, so soft Hook couldn’t hear it. When he leaned back, he and Scavenger’s optics were locked, the latter nodding in some private agreement.

“Now move it, both of you,” Prowl said, voice returned to its usual commanding timbre. He turned and proceeded out the way he’d been headed before, leaving Hook and Scavenger to follow. It wasn’t a problem this time, though they walked after him on legs that felt suddenly weak. It still took a great deal of will on Hook’s part not to cast a final glance backward as they left, but he managed it, keeping his optics ahead of him, on the doorwings that swayed with each step Prowl took.


	5. Command

There was a tension in the group. Hook didn’t want to make much of it, but it was present in the way Prowl entered the timestream without a world to the rest of them, and how Long Haul inserted himself into the lineup without being told to. Hook almost stayed behind, since Prowl hadn’t specified an anchor, but Mixmaster was already making himself comfortable against the back wall. They shared a glance, and then Hook followed the others into the past.

Now, they were on Cybertron again, an explosion had just gone off in the distance, and Prowl was speeding down the road after it. Hook watched, dismayed, as the little Earth cop car disappeared around a corner, but turning to the others gained nothing but confused shrugs and a nervous peep from Scavenger.

“We’re going after him,” Hook decided, because following Prowl’s lead was his default. “Hook and Scavenger, you’re coming with me. Bonecrusher, you stay here.”

“But—”

“I’m sorry, we don’t have time to discuss this.” He did feel bad about leading Bonecrusher behind again, but that seemed to have been Prowl’s preference so far. “Come on, guys.”

The trio transformed in unison and took off down the road, Hook in front with Long Haul and Scavenger flanking him. Even the time it had taken them to get this far put them at a disadvantage, and they were forced to go more by hope and instinct than anything else.

“Either of you see anything?” Hook asked anyway.

“No, fragger’s fast,” Long Haul said. His voice came out in a huff and his engine was belching exhaust, not designed for a high-speed chase. Scavenger, too, was struggling, but Long Haul’s annoyance came through more obviously. Hook hoped he would be able to bear it the way he had throughout their time in the Decepticons, accepting whatever miserable jobs Megatron assigned to them. Demeaning occasionally, and below what their skills were capable of, but worth it to know they would be fueled in the end.

Everyone had their limits, though.

“Oh, frag this.” Long Haul slammed on his breaks and flipped up into root mode. Hook swerved to the side to slow himself down while Scavenger skidded forward, his treads not designed for sharp maneuvers.

“C’mon, Haul, we don’t have time for this,” Hook said. “We’ve got to catch up to Prowl.”

“Why?” Long Haul demanded, standing in the middle of the street and crossing his arms.

“Uh, because he’s the boss?” Scavenger said as he and Hook also transformed. He said it like a suggestion for the others to verify and shrunk back from Long Haul’s glare.

“Why? Why do we keep him?”

“He’s part of the team,” Hook said, advancing on Long Haul. They really didn’t have time for one of his episodes right now, and sometimes stupid aggression was enough to get him to back down. “He’s our head and he knows what he’s doing, so he’s the boss.”

“That’s slag and you know it!” Long Haul shouted, reciprocating with a ringer that jabbed at Hook’s chestplate. “You used to be the head, Hook! That was your job, you were proud of it, and that made the whole thing stick together. When did you become such a softspark?”

“Stop talking slag, Long Haul.” Hook shoved him, just enough to dislodge the angry jabs.

“Stop looking at him like you’re a pathetic little turbopuppy! Both of you.” He looked between Scavenger and Hook as though both disgusted him and he couldn’t decide which was less painful to look at. “When are you going to finally realize that that’s not the same Prowl anymore?”

“Watch it,” Hook warned.

“We’re going after some no-name punk with nothing to go on but a list he left for us to find!” Long Haul gestured around them, as though the buildings were to blame for their predicament. “Prowl abandoned us, got scrapped, and completely lost his edge. I don’t know why he dragged us along on this stupid chase, and I don’t care anymore.”

“You were the one ready to fight him just to come with this time!” Hook pointed out.

“So I could work with the team,” Long Haul corrected. “That’s how we do things, Hook, how it’s always been. This, though, spread out on either side of the war, not even able to comm each other? That’s not worth my time. You two better keep yourselves safe and not get yourselves slagged on Prowl’s behalf, but I’m done.”

“You can’t be _done_ ,” Hook said, grabbing Long Haul by the arm.

Before the upgrades, that might have done something. Now, Hook had just a moment to process his mistake before he felt himself being lifted into the air and slammed down onto the metal ground. Air rushed from his vents, a wince escaping his vocoder as he felt something _snap_.

“Want to tell me what I can’t do?” Long Haul said, staring down at him.

Hook started to push himself up, though his rattled gyros made figuring out the precise direction a challenge.

“Prowl’s part of our team. If you have a problem with that, you bring it up with him. You don’t walk away from a job.”

“Maybe you should bother telling him that some time,” Long Haul said. “I’m going back. I won’t leave without you, because you’re team and that’s how we work. But Prowl can rot another four million years. I’m done.”

He stalked off, heavy footsteps sending echoes through the narrow, empty alleyways. Hook tried to watch him go, but his attention drawn aside by a faint whimper.

Scavenger had cowered by the wall, shivering, optics turned up bright.

“Hey, Scav, it’s okay,” Hook said, finally finding the bearings to sit up and offer a hand to his teammate. “C’mere, it’s okay.”

Scavenger hesitated, then crossed the space, kneeling beside Hook so they could entwine their fingers. They sat together, silent among the distant sounds of city life, while Hook waited for Scavenger to say whatever he needed. He wished Prowl were here. Whenever the Constructicon leaders had disappeared, it had fallen on Hook to make decisions and get them through, and he always hated it. He could never make the right choices, say the right things. Even at his best, there was always something off in the end, a problem left over that Scrapper or Prowl had to solve.

“I don’t know if I agree with Long Haul,” Scrapper said, “but I don’t think he’s wrong. Prowl doesn’t care about us.”

As soon as the team got their slag sorted, Hook was going to kill Long Haul and Prowl.

“I don’t know about that,” he tried, but that just caused Scavenger’s plating to shiver as his optic band flickered.

“I mean, he just _left_ ,” he pointed out. “Most of the time he treats us more like a nuisance than an asset, and he said himself, he only picked us for the gestalt bond. Not even for _combining_ , just the bond itself.”

“Well, yeah,” Hook said. “But I think the important thing is, and what Long Haul’s having trouble remembering right now, is that we _have_ combined with him. Prowl’s part of the team, and whether we’re helpful for him, whether he appreciates having us, we’re together. We’re going to be there for each other, even at our worst, our most unhelpful. That’s what it means.”

“Shouldn’t we be trying to do better?” Scavenger asked.

Hook shrugged. He would say they had been, but at this point he wasn’t so sure that was true.

“If you want, I guess,” he said. It was an Autobotish idea, the kind only Scavenger could come up with. None of the others knew where he got thoughts like that, and multiple investigations had revealed little more than the presence of a permanently gentler spark among their ranks.

“But that kind of thing takes time, and effort,” he went on. “And in the meantime, we’re still team. So, even at our most nasty, most unappreciative, worst tempered selves, we stick together.”

“Yeah, and Prowl _left_ —”

“I know.” Hook really was going to kill Prowl later. “He doesn’t get it. We’ll figure it out, though, because that’s the real reason we stick together through the worst of each other: when we inevitably screw up, we’re there to help each other fix our mistakes.” He patted Scavenger’s shoulder. “Listen: go back with Long Haul and make sure no one does anything really stupid that gets us stuck here for four million years. I’ll catch up with Prowl and we’ll regroup.”

“But, Prowl said to—”

“From what I recall, Prowl didn’t say anything, so as second in command it falls to me to make the orders. Got it, Scavenger?”

Dropping the nickname seemed to do the trick. Scavenger sat up straighter, nodding his assent. Though Hook doubted he was really convinced, all of them functioned better when they had specific orders to follow. Improvisers, the team were not.

“Okay,” Scavenger said, “but how are you going to find him?”

Hook just managed to keep his plating from shifting uncomfortably.

“I’ll figure it out,” he said. “Bond will help.” The gestalt bond really wasn’t designed for sonar work like this, but it could work. If he kept following the direction of the explosion they heard earlier, the combination might be enough. Besides, Prowl would be on the lookout to make sure none of them did anything too stupid, right?

Scavenger transformed and took off the way Long Haul had gone, while Hook did the same in the opposite direction. In an a distantly familiar city with only a vague sense of direction, the possibility of getting lost was very real, but he didn’t see any other choice than to keep going. Tires, never updated from their Earth form, skidded painfully against the smooth metal roads, and more than once his rush almost had him crashing into walls.

He needed to get to Prowl. The team needed a leader, and he wasn’t—

“Hook!”

He tried to slam on his breaks, and this time really did careen into a wall.

“Prowl!?”

“This way!”

He backed away from the wall, bumper smarting, and tried to look around, but the most he caught was a glimpse before his teammate was hurrying on.

He back away from the wall, bumper smarting, and looked over just in time to catch a glint of plating disappear around a corner. Surprised that Prowl had come back for him, Hook couldn’t be too resentful over being left behind again.

“Yes, sir,” he shouted as he righted himself and gave chase.

Even in the tight turns of Cybertronian alleyways, trying to be a leader, Prowl’s alt-mode was still naturally faster than Hook’s and it was all the crane could do to keep up with the darting shadow. He stayed in view, but just barely, and at each turn Hook worried that he would come around and see no more of Prowl. It did happen a couple times, but Prowl’s voice always came back and got him again.

“Come on!”

“Hurry up!”

“Hook!”

He liked it when Prowl said his name. Stupid thing to be thinking about in the middle of a chase, but that’s where his processor went. He only snapped back to reality when he turned a corner, didn’t see Prowl, and heard no call guiding him on which way to go next.

“Prowl?” he called. “Prowl, where’d you—”

“Hook, _quiet_.”

The angry command came from _above_. Hook transformed to root mode and looked up, just able to catch the glare of a single optic from up on the roof.

“How’d you get up there?” he asked.

Prowl put a finger to his lips and pointed further down the building, to a fire escape.

“Right, gotcha,” Hook said. He thought he heard a hushed grumble but was too busy making his way up the ladder to worry about it.

It was a squat building by Cybertronian standards, probably a warehouse of one single, high-ceilinged story, and it only took Hook a few moments to scramble to the top. Once he was there, he could see they were on the outskirts of a distant city, somewhere deep in a manufacturing district. Further out, twinkles of life flickered and danced. The area around them had the same aesthetic as the last place they’d been to, but here was dead and still, not even a whisper on the breeze to suggest life nearby. Pockmarks of war dotted the landscape, and when he peered closer at those distant lights, he realized that some were undoubtedly fires.

Prowl stood on the edge of the roof, and though his doorwings twitched as Hook approached, he did not turn to his teammate.

“What’s going down?” Hook asked, trying to keep his voice hushed. From the glare he got, he hadn’t been successful.

“Megatron just killed Orion Pax,” Prowl said, pointing out, toward the lights. It was impossible to tell what he was indicating, though Hook thought he saw a smudge that might have been a crater. “At this moment, I suspect Orion is within several meters of the Matrix.”

“He’s gonna become Prime?” Hook’s voice hushed further still.

“Yes.” There was a creak of strained metal. At his side, Prow’s fist had tightened. “Our war is about to begin.”

Hook looked at the clenched hand in dismay. It sounded painful, but he didn’t have anything to offer to alleviate it besides his own frame.

“Didn’t Megatron and Sentinel already get it going, though?” he tried, as though that might be enough to distract Prowl.

“The conflict between the Autobots and Decepticons was a long time coming, yes, but the real war? The pointless grandstanding of ideals between Optimus and Megatron that they dragged an entire galaxy into? We’re witnessing its birth right now.”

It was a quiet, desolate birth. Its attendees, sparse though they were, looked on. Prowl’s hands had relaxed at his sides, but the rest of his frame was rigid with tension, like a soldier waiting for inspection. Discipline was measured differently between the Autobots and Decepticons: Megatron hadn’t cared so much if you could stand up straight, so long as you were able to hold you own and maintain Decepticon victory. Hook still recognized, though the posture of a mech who could no longer conceive of rest.

He thought about the rest of the team, about how just a day ago they’d been lying in hospital beds, their bodies just recently stitched back together and brought online. Maybe all they needed was a break.

“I’ve made myself sick wondering what would have happened if it had been me,” Prowl said, breaking the weight of the silence. It still took Hook a moment to understand.

“Prime?”

No response, which said enough. Hook didn’t know what to say either. He couldn’t imagine it: Prowl, a Prime? Yes, he was an ideal leader, adept at developing strategies and making necessary decisions, but Primacy was more than the wartime role Optimus had shaped it into. Primes were ruthless in all things. Prowl had a bit of that going for him, more than most Autobots, but he had an unfortunate caring streak that made him unfit.

The way Scrapper had described it, Primehood came with some vague set of ideals, freedom and mercy and whatever else the Matrix had written on its handlebars or whatever. It was the role of the Prime to maintain those ideals in himself and his followers, no matter the material cost, and often enough to his own detriment. A Prime was expected to allow a deadly enemy to live, because to kill him would infringe on everything that made him a Prime. Prowl wasn’t capable of that. Primes never thought about the ends, about what their actions were intended to produce, instead focused on production itself.

Primes asked _why_ instead of _how_. They weren’t the type to do the things that needed to be done; Prowl was. Mechs like Prowl, who could draft a plan and see it through to completion without squeamishness, were essential, even though few mechs understood that. They weren’t _meant_ to understand, that wasn’t the point, and it was that distinction which set Prowl apart from every lousy Prime their planet had ever spat out.

Hook didn’t think to say any of that. Instead, what came out was, “Would’ve been lousy.”

Prowl laughed, a single, sharp sound that seemed to shrink the space around them.

“Yes, I think the Autobots would agree with you,” he said.

“Don’t really care what Autobots think,” Hook grumbled.

Prowl’s hand moved, fluttering up to the center of his chest piece. He opened his mouth, but seemed to teeter over the words, closing it again without a sound. His hand dropped. Hook watched the whole movement, knowing that he had missed something essential.

“Do you want it?” he asked.

That snapped a change in Prowl, reset him as though their brief foray into something approaching intimacy hadn’t taken place. His doorwings were up, and when his optic met Hook’s, it was like being faced with a one-way mirror.

“What I want is of no concern,” Prowl said. “I need to stop time from collapsing in on itself. I need to protect every life in the universe from a sudden, agonizing death.”

He didn’t want to talk about it, which told Hook it was important, but not how to get through. Again, he wished they could still combine. Inability to understand Prowl hadn’t been a problem their first time together, because inevitably they would link up and everything Hook wanted to know would be made available. The longer they spent together without accessing each other’s minds, though, the more lost Hook felt around his teammate.

“I want to know what’s going on,” he tried, even though he hadn’t been asked. “I want to know who we’re chasing, what they did, why it even matters to you.”

“I’ve told you everything you need to know, Hook,” Prowl said, leaning close, the way he did when he was trying to intimidate him. Hook wasn’t sure why it wasn’t working this time, but his lack of reaction, caused Prowl’s lips to pull back in a snarl. “Are you questioning my authority?”

“No,” he said, “but I guess you should know the others are asking questions. Long Haul’s getting tired of all this.”

“ _Long Haul’s_ tired?” Prowl repeated.

Hook did wince then. Wrong time to ask for a break, definitely, but he was too deep in the scrapheap now.

“He says he’s done,” Hook said. “And even though he’s the most dramatic slagger I’ve ever met, it’s still gonna mean something if he walks out. Last time it happened, Scrapper quit the job to get him back. The others are gonna be paying attention.”

“What would they have me do?” Prowl demanded. “Abandon the mission? You did hear me when I said _every life in the universe_ , didn’t you? That’s past and future, Hook, that’s the scale we’re facing right now.”

“Yeah, I know,” Hook said, “and to be honest, I don’t think they’d care.”

Prowl stepped back so quickly it was like he’d just noticed the big, ugly Decepticon in front of him. The facial expression was still imparseable, and his doorwings were fluttering in a pattern Hook had never seen before.

“You don’t. _Care._ ”

“No?” Hook looked around, at ruins that would soon become ashes of the world they’d called home. “Prowl, think about it. Pretty much every other species would be happy to see Cybertronians dead and destroyed. If Unicron hadn’t gotten to it first, they would have melted Cybertron for scrap the first chance they got. What do I care whether a bunch of slaggers like that live?”

Prowl’s mouth was working before his vocalizer had a chance to catch up.

“—rthlings are giving up their home for you! The Galactic Council is finally giving us a chance to do good in the universe, after we spent four million years blowing it up! And even if you can’t find it in your sick, undersized spark to care about that, are you really too stupid to remember that you’re _one of those slaggers_?”

Hook stared down at Prowl, his doorwings trembling with anxiety, optic so bright it was nearly white, fans turned up high as his little body radiated heat. He hadn’t seen this Prowl in a long, long time. And oh, how he’d missed it.

So, Hook shrugged.

“The Autobots’ll clean it up, then.”

Prowl’s finger stabbed at the middle of his chest, where, even after all that had happened, there was still his Autobrand, red against the inky black.

“ _I. Am. An Autobot!_ ”

Both mechs were too engrossed in each other to notice the faint light blossoming in the distance.

“C’mon, Prowl, under all that paint we all know you’re still—”

“Don’t say it!”

The spot grew brighter, a bubble of blue energy that sucked in on itself while still it grew.

“—Constructicon green.”

The bubble burst. Both mechs swung around as a pillar of blue light erupted into the sky, announcing the arrival of the new Prime. Hook felt bleached by the light, color ripped from the furrows of his plating, and when he tried to look to the mech beside him, all he saw was white, contour sucked from the world.

Even when the light dissipated and their colors returned, Prowl’s doorwings remained shocked to stillness. For reasons he couldn’t articulate, that was the detail that made Hook question himself.

“Prowl—”

“We’re leaving,” Prowl said, ducking his helm so Hook couldn’t see his optic. “The target isn’t here.”

Hook’s teammate, their leader, turned and walked back to the ladder that had taken him up here. He hurried to follow, hopping off at the bottom so he had time to transform and keep up with Prowl, who was blowing ahead without waiting.

The drive was much faster the second time and Hook didn’t recognize the route, but he wasn’t thinking about it. He was mostly concerned about Prowl, in a vague way he didn’t know exactly how to communicate. Everything he’d said was _true_. This was more Scavenger’s thing, though, emotions and slag. Hook wouldn’t ask him about it, but maybe he would shove Scavenger to Prowl at some point and see if he had better luck working out what had gone wrong.

Bonecrusher was alone when they pulled up. Prowl didn’t acknowledge him as he transformed and marched through, and all Hook had to offer was a hopeless shrug as they followed.

The timestream felt heavier as they trudged through. Hook’s vents were acting up, or maybe it was the air itself, but he felt like his internal were overheating while his prating grew frigid and brittle. Stepping out the other side was even more of a relief than normal, but the feeling was replaced by dread when he saw his teammates cowered to one side, Prowl punching the keys of the terminal as images flashed across its screens.

“Where to next, boss?” he asked, approaching Prowl from behind and angling to try to see what was going on in front of him.

“You’re fired.”

Hook froze.

There was a whimper somewhere behind him.

“Boss, what…”

“I am now an independent agent,” Prowl said. “If you continue stalking me during my mission, I will take lethal action. I am no longer obligated to ensure your safe return to the present: if you follow me, you will be stranded.”

“Wait, but— _Prowl_.”

The gate was open again and Prowl had shoved past Hook to approach it. The others were frozen, staring.

“Useless slags, _stop him_ ,” Hook ordered. They needed to do something, fix this. They were builders, engineers: whatever had gone wrong, they could mend, but they couldn’t do it if Prowl was on the other end of time.

Bonecrusher, still at the arch, took one step to intercept Prowl’s advance. Hook didn’t see the look Prowl shifted to him, but he saw the berserker freeze, then cower, ducking out of the way and giving Prowl unimpeded access to the timestream.

“Prowl, stop!” Hook finally remembered how his motor functions worked and chased after him, too late. He was still several meters away, echoes of his footsteps rattling the cave walls, when Prowl’s doorwings melted into the light and he was gone.

“How in the _pits_ do you plan to get back?” he demanded of the freezing light. What the frag had happened? This wasn’t logical, this wasn’t a plan. This was an act of emotion that Hook didn’t know how to categorize. This wasn’t how Prowl worked.

Now that Prowl was gone, the team stepped closer, crowding around the archway as they stared into the swirling timestream.

“Are we gonna leave?” Scavenger asked.

“We can’t,” Mixmaster said.

“Yeah,” Bonecrusher said.

Long Haul didn’t add anything. He was looking at Hook, and when they caught each other’s gaze, Hook understood enough.

“Of course not,” Hook said, turning back to the timestream. “I’m going to get him.”

“We all should,” Long Haul said, but Hook shook his helm.

“No, I fragged up,” he said. “I’ll risk my plating to get him back, and then after that, we’ll fix it. But I’ve gotta do this first.”

“He said he’d kill you,” Bonecrusher said.

Hook shrugged.

“Have heard that a lot,” he pointed out.

There was no response. They were a team and it was their nature to solve problems together, but they also had a chain of command. Prowl had removed himself from it, which meant Hook was at the top, and they would follow his orders for as long as it was productive. They would not stop him as he stepped forward, though Scavenger’s expression seemed just shy of begging him to let them come.

“Back in a klik,” he said, and stepped through.


	6. Peace

There was something different this time. The push of the timestream was still there, its resistance to invasion, but now it felt confused. Hook’s legs were being pulled backward while his chest was lifted, his left arm drawn to his side. None of it was wholly uncomfortable yet, but the variety of sensations made it harder than usual to keep track of which way was up. He knew there was no choice but to keep moving forward, even as the building pressure started to remind him of that last fight with Victorion, feeling on the edge of victory only to be torn away from Long Haul without warning.

“Prowl!” he yelled, and the sound made his spark stutter. He’d never tried to talk in the timestream before, and it sounded like Soundwave’s multi-layered vocalizations, his own voice piled on top of itself many times over and bellowed into an echoless void.

He needed to get out. The timestream, empty and endless as it was, felt like it was pressing in on him, and there was nowhere to go. At the place where there should have been an end to the tunnel, an opening into whatever time Prowl had ejected himself into, there was nothing but more fragmentary space. There no footsteps in the timestream.

Hook wondered if this might be the end. He would be part of a legacy, anyway: dying in a state of heightened confusion, far away from the team. There were real reasons to be scared and upset about that, but the only thing he could think was that, having gone from prison to battle to hospital, they hadn’t even had a chance for a good frag before all this went down. He was going to die, and the main things on his mind were Long Haul’s tires. Great.

“Prowl!” he yelled again, bearing the unease caused by the sound of his voice. “It doesn’t have to be like this!”

“It does, Hook.”

The voice was so close. Hook whipped around, trying to find its source, but the familiar Praxian frame did not reveal itself. Space twisted around, obfuscating the way he’d come, and Hook became dizzy. There was no up anymore, no forward. Just time, its crystalline branches weaving over each other, incredible patterns that Scavenger or Mixmaster might have called beautiful. He thought of the possibility that he take an exit, the first one he came across, and just live through whatever time he ended up in. He survived the war once; he could do it again.

He’d come to get Prowl, though. He couldn’t leave without him.

“Come on,” he said, optics searching as though Prowl might be behind a spiderwebbing fragment. “That’s slag. I fragged up, but we can fix it.”

“You can’t fix this, Hook.”

He felt it like a blunt blow to his pride.

“What would you know?” he demanded.

Something shifted, its ripple out of time with the rest of movements of the timestream. Hook’s optics darted down to it, and he watched as the walls of time shivered and cracked, beams of darkness breaking through. Hook stumbled toward them, barely able to remember how his legs worked, his systems were to delirious with relief. Five windows opened, just the right size to peer into the times beyond.

“Enough,” Prowl said.

Hook couldn’t make sense of the scene at first. It was Cybertron, of course, but free of bullet hole pockmarks. Their missions had so attuned him to pre-war Cybertron that he didn’t immediately recognize the post-war (or at least the closest they’d come) landscape, though in time his processor did manage to make sense of it. It was somewhere in the depths of New Iacon, the sewer systems and maintenance lines that the Decepticons had made their base for a while.

Prowl stepped into view, still wearing his old frame. His optics were bright with stress and his doorwings arched high, but there was an air about him Hook wasn’t familiar with. The way he carried himself, dove so confidently around each corner, was removed from the mech he knew, who clunk through the shadows with the grace of a cybercat. Hook’s spark stirred again, though he brushed it off as the unnatural forces still toying with his frame.

He made to reach in, pry open the window a little wider so he could escape to freedom, but found that it would not allow entrance, an invisible force holding his hand back. He grunted in frustration.

“Prowl, what gives?”

“Just look,” the voice said, distant and yet chillingly, intimately close.

He shifted to the next window, wondering if maybe Prowl was waiting for him there. Instead, it was another scene, another Prowl. Above ground, under the Cybertornian sun, wielding a gun half his own height. So proud, so _radiant_ , the sight drew an exvent out of Hook.

“Don’t get distracted, Hook,” Prowl said. “That’s not me.”

What? Of course it was. When Hook humored Prowl and looked closer, though, he thought he understood what was meant. The armor was different from the one shown in the last window, enhanced and bulked up to match the demands of his soon-to-be gestaltmates. His optics (two!) were as piercing as ever, but unlike the tactician Prowl, who took every opportunity to survey a situation and formulate evolving strategies, these were hard, intended solely to challenge anyone who returned their gaze. Hook remembered at last that Bombshell was the one behind them here, that It was his cruel smile twisting Prowl’s neutral features. The most uncanny part of it, though, were the rigid doorwings. Even as he spoke, inaudible through the peephole, and gesticulated to his onlookers, the doorwings were fixed, mute.

“Eugh,” Hook said.

“You understand?”

Hook glanced up, though there was still no one there.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“You don’t believe me, that this is beyond your ability to fix,” Prowl said. “I’m showing you proof.”

Prowl’s processor was big, beautifully complex, able to solve problems with such elegance the rest of the swooned. But he was being shortsighted when he claimed there was nothing they could do. They were a team of builders, able to fix pretty much anything, and they did it together. Though they might have been temporarily pulled apart, Prowl just needed to come out of hiding and they would prove it to him.

Instead, he just said, “Keep going,” and Hook was obliged to obey.

He knew the next window before the entire scene had come into view. It was one of his favorite memories, one of the few he’d kept locked up tight during Scoop’s brief stint with the team: Megatron gave the order to combine, and after months of laying low, Devastator’s components came together again. The feeling of reconnecting had been like a rush of sweet coolant through Hook’s lines, and then invigorating energon, as a new mind swept them up with its incredible power.

Except, here, that perfect moment of synchronicity was delayed, and instead the view swept down. It found Prowl, splayed on the ground, screaming. All the way through that first transformation, as the power of combination lifted him into his place as Devastator’s head, his expression was warped in agony. Hook stared the whole way through, until the silent screams were encased within Prowl’s own body, folded and reshaped into the head of their combined forms. When Devastator’s mouth opened, it was to bellow with rage.

It unsettled him. Hook had always known that first combination had been without Prowl’s consent, but the bliss that followed, Devastator’s purpose reborn, swept over his limited misgivings. Now, Prowl’s expression permanently etched in his memory core and knowing that Prowl had intended it so, the misgiving crept back in.

“You didn’t want to be a part of us at first, I get it,” Hook said as he moved to the next window. “But that’s not really unusual. Long Haul didn’t want to combine either, when Megatron first told us about it. You learn to like it more as time goes on, though, right?”

The next scene, not far ahead at all: Cybertron under siege from Shockwave’s assault, Metroplex barely holding out and in need of backup. Prowl looked up, into the sky, and Hook swore he saw his optics flicker the moment he made his decision. A second later, he gave his first order to combine.

“After that first time combining, though, things change,” Hook said. “You see each other, and then you can never imagine yourselves apart again.”

He hovered by that window, watching as Devastator met Monstructor head on, his rage and brutality underscored by a long-term strategy the rest of the team hadn’t been prepared for. The first time they’d combined with Prowl had been good, but this was the moment that had made them realize that they needed to keep their new teammate, that he was going to be a part of them forever, the same way Scrapper still was. He missed it, he realized, that moment of epiphany. It had been less than a cycle before they disconnected again, but in his memory, it stretched out, a breathtaking expanse of violence he wanted so badly to reclaim.

Prowl sighed, though it was more like Hook felt it than an actual noise he heard. Before his optics, the window stitched itself closed again, empty space left where one the chaos of battle had waged. To either side of him, the others did the same, once more enclosing Hook in the timestream.

“I hoped I would be able to show you and you would understand, but I guess I forgot what you used to be like.”

There was direction to the voice now. Hook whipped around.

“ _Prow_ —you’re not Prowl.”

The mech, standing a dozen or so meters away, had an all-black paint sceme and stood at eye-level with Hook. He was a vehicle, likely a car of some sort, but it was a queer blend of Cybertronian and Earth design, rubberoid wheels embellished with thick treads. His posture could have been described as casual or confident, Hook couldn’t decide which, though his doorwings twitched faintly.

The luxurious black was was so silky that the mech’s features faded against the bright background, though the matte gray Autobrand centered stark on his chest. The other most visible features were his gray faceplate and purple optics, framed under a familiar red chevron.

“…are you?”

The doorwings fluttered up.

“That’s my name, yes,” he said, the grin he bore making Hook doubt himself again.

“But you’re not my Prowl.”

“I am who ‘your Prowl’ is going to become,” he said. “I’ve come from your future.”

“Neat,” Hook said, and immediately wanted to punch himself in the face. Prowl was here, dropping revelations like that, and the best he could come up with was ‘neat’?

The smile, though, did not fade, even as Prowl strode forward to collapse the distance between them. Hook startled when the hand came up, fingers resting against the side of his helm, tilting it like he was a fine weapon being observed.

“You’re nervous,” future Prowl said.

“Yeah.” Prowl’s fingertips were smooth on his plating, barely making a sound as they glided along delicate seams. “You said you were going to kill me a few minutes ago. Uh, years? How far in the future you from?”

“Several centuries.”

“Ah.” They caressed his audial receptors, the curve of his jaw. Was Prowl looking for something, a stasis switch hidden in the nook between lower jaw and throat cables? He didn’t know of anything like that on his frame, but it seemed more likely than what his processor desperately wanted to believe this was.

“Is the team, you know, still together?” he asked.

“That’s what I’m here to address, actually,” Prowl said, his hand pulling back with a final brush along Hook’s cheek. Hook could not help that his optics trained to the hand as it returned to his side, though the steady purple glow of Prowl’s optics eventually regained his focus. “This moment is a turning point, Hook. The team is about to enter a new phase in its legacy, and it’s on you to determine how this transition resolves.”

“Me?” No, that couldn’t be right. That wasn’t how they did things; they were a _team_ , they smashed through their problems together. Yes, he’d decided that retrieving Prowl would be his responsibility, but there should still have been time to go get the others before anything important happened. “Shouldn’t we all be here for that?”

“No. You were alone when you found me,” Prowl said.

“Yeah, but I can go grab them and—”

“I mean the first time,” Prowl interrupted. “My first time. Your second.” Hook’s (voluntary) lack of comprehension must have shown, because Prowl sighed and tilted his head. That smile was back, and it didn’t seem to be mocking. “You’re about to go find him. I know, because I remember it happening.” He said it like a conspiracy.

Something inside Hook was rattling. Not audibly, but he swore he could feel it, a deep feeling that was probably going to shake his frame until it fell apart, limbs and plating in an undignified heap in this nowhere place.

“So, I’m going to go get the real—present— _my_ Prowl, and I’m going to do… _something_ that causes him to become,” he waved his hands in front of the tall, black mech, “ _this_.”

There was a glimmer in Prowl’s optics, a tremble in his doorwings, but his vocalizer stayed silent. Hook sagged.

“Come on, Prowl, what do I do?” he asked.

Nothing.

“I don’t want to mess up.” He hoped it didn’t sound like he was begging. “You’re from the future, you know everything.”

“What do you want me to tell you?” Prowl asked with a shrug. “That you find me, make a few more empty promises, and that’s what convinces me to come back to the present? That we finish up the mission, lock up our culprit, and spend the rest of our lives as Windblade’s secret task force?”

He advanced a step closer.

“Or the one where we leave Earth entirely? Travel from planet to planet, mercenaries one day and construction crew the next. Cybertronians are still generally disliked by most of the galaxy, so we spend nights piled up in whatever seedy motel won’t rat us out to the local militia.”

Another step. The rattling grew more violent.

“Our relationship gets pushed back to square one. We learn from the mistakes of our past, make more in the future, and figure out how to put together something that works. We stop letting the trauma that first brought us together continue defining what we could be to each other.”

Hook’s vents caught when he heard that word, though Prowl’s voice was so hushed he almost missed it. They were so close; he would only have to lean forward to…

But he stopped himself. He needed to know, first, “Do we ever combine again?”

This close, Hook could see Prowl’s lenses as they contracted, narrowing as he straightened himself into the rigid, unreadable posture Hook was more familiar with. Not mission relevant, he guessed, but not irrelevant, either. The futures Prowl described sounded… weird, but good. The team stayed together, got work doing things they were good at. He didn’t know how he felt about their employers, Autobots or aliens, but he could handle anyone if it meant he was with the whole team.

Could if be whole, though, if they were missing their giant, invisible seventh? The thought stung, a sharp pinch he felt in his inactive combination ports. To never again feel Long Haul’s ambition, Mixmaster’s curiosity, Bonecrusher’s protectiveness, Scavenger’s blend of emotions they’d never been able to put words to… Prowl’s _brilliance_ … When they combined, the best parts of his favorite mechs flowed into him, meshed with his own processor to produce something greater, a feeling that they would never have to worry about being alone. Combining had become the means by which they understood each other, and even if they stayed together for centuries, he couldn’t see how they would last through millennia without it.

This was fear, he realized, even as the rattling inside of him stilled.

“Hook.” Gentle hands on his frame again: one back to cradling his helm, the other squeezing his arm, rubbing glyph-like patterns along the plating. Unfamiliar though they were, Hook found himself leaning into the touches. “Remember, that was all hypothetical. I can’t tell you what happens in the future. But I can tell you this: it’s good. No, better than that. It’s peaceful.”

“What does that mean?” Hook asked, even as his optics threatened to power down. When was the last time they’d recharged?

“What do you think it means?”

Prowl didn’t want to kill them. They fragged a lot. All the pests left them alone. They made a living working hard, working for themselves, without Shockwave or Starscream or _Autobots_ telling them what to do. They were together.

If Prowl was being honest, though, then he probably knew that, and there were more pressing matters.

“What am I supposed to do with all this?” Hook asked.

His gaze had shifted down. He realized this when gentle persuasion from Prowl’s hand had him look up again, and he was met with those unfamiliar purple optics.

“You were on the right track,” Prowl said. “You go find me, and you say what needs to be said. We go from there.”

“But what is it? What do I say?” He didn’t care anymore if it sounded like begging; this was too important. He couldn’t screw it up. For as weird as this Prowl was, the futures he described sounded worthwhile. Hook wanted it, he realized, regardless of whether they could combine. It would be more work, to learn how to know each other without a direct connection, but it would be worth it to keep Prowl in their lives. For a few centuries, forever, anywhere in between, would be worth it.

Prowl’s expression softened again, his doorwings giving little flutters, and Hook wondered if he’d somehow revealed what he was thinking anyway.

“You’re going to keep this secret for a long time,” Prowl said. “From the other Constructicons, and especially from me. Once we’re collectively in a steadier place, then you’ll tell me about it. You need to tell me about this conversation, and that I need to trace our steps back through the mission and doctor things a bit.”

“You…”

“Just a few details, to make me notice you all more, question some conclusions I’d come to,” Prowl specified. “Trigger one of Mesothulas’ experiments to combust; make Bonecrusher think I’m about to walk into a firefight.”

“You were the one leading me around Cybertron!” Hook gasped. “When you—past you took off, you knew where to find him!”

“My directions were a little off, but I got you there in time,” Prowl agreed. He sighed, a pleasant sound, pulling back again as his expression turned serious. “I know I’m asking a lot of you, Hook. All I have to offer is my trust that you will do this to the best of your abilities, and in return I’m asking you to trust me that, regardless of the details, it will be worth it. The conversation we’re about to have is…” But he stopped himself, started over. “I’m asking you to give me another chance. Can you do that?”

“Of course, Prowl,” Hook said. The answer was automatic. Regardless of the weird paint and far-fetched stories, he knew in his spark that this was still his teammate. “Always.”

Another smile. Hook realized that there were more to look forward to, in some hypothetical distant future, and a tentative excitement built in his spark. Yes, he could trust Prowl.

“I know,” Prowl said. He reached forward again, wrapping his fingers around Hook’s hand just long enough to squeeze, before letting go and stepping back as time started to stitch itself over and around him. “See you again soon.”

Then Prowl was gone, and Hook was alone. Something stirred within him, an old feeling, pointing off to the side. He turned toward it, letting it guide his steps until eventually he came upon the past.

He’d only heard rumors of the Arctic, a dreadful patch of Earth that was cold enough to freeze the fuel in your lines and drifts so high they could swallow a Cybertronian. Stumbling into the past, his pedes landing in snow just high enough to cover their tips, he was disappointed at what had turned out to be an exaggeration. Driving would have been a pain in these conditions, but as he looked out, he reasoned it wouldn't be necessary, judging by the even pedeprints that led away from the rift and into a nearby covering of dark trees. There wasn’t room for hesitation here: Hook stepped into the tracks and let them guide him forward. If Prowl had been lying, Hook would know soon enough.

He wasn’t surprised when the barrel of a gun appeared through the trees.

“I warned you, Hook,” Prowl said, stepping out. He didn’t have his finger on the trigger, but Hook raised his hands in surrender.

“We’re not great at the whole listening thing.”

“I’ve noticed.” Prowl’s optics, familiar blue, narrowed. He glanced to either side, not taking his sight off Hook for longer than a nanoklik. “Where are they?”

“The rest of the team?”

Cold silence.

“They stayed behind,” Hook said. “I told them to. I screwed up, so it’s on me to make things…” Well, not right. That had been future Prowl’s whole point, and he wasn’t about to waste the opportunity he’d been given. “We need one more chance,” he tried instead.

“This was your chance,” Prowl said, his hand tightening around the gun, “and you failed. I can’t trust you to follow orders or respect my decisions. How do I know you wouldn’t have killed Springer on sight?”

There was no victory in learning their target’s identity; what had once seemed so crucial, the in that would give them access to everything else Prowl was holding back, became insignificant when spat from a face glowing with hate.

“Do you want to know why I really chose you?” Prowl asked.

Hook did. He didn’t. It didn’t matter, because he wasn’t the one holding the gun.

“You aren’t the only bonded Cybertronians still alive. There are other active combiner teams, and even splitspark twins would have done the job. I picked you,” Prowl’s doorwings trembled, “because I knew I could live with it if the timestream killed you all.”

Hook’s internals shifted. He hadn’t thought he’d expected an explanation like that, but he found no trace of surprise in his systems, nothing to indicate that this was outside of Prowl’s usual behavior. He’d been more shocked to wake up to that message left over their comms, a cryptic command left while they recharged, and it was that realization that had his engine rumbling in arrhythmic pulses.

“The timestream?” he managed to ask. Any other part of the admission would have been impossible to address.

“We’re not built to exist in a place like that, let alone survive,” Prowl said. “Excess exposure gradually tears your spark across multiple dimensions, photon by photon. Agonizing, and once you’re sealed in, eternal.” His optic flared. “I was ready to see every one of you fall to it.”

He couldn’t help it, Prowl’s stare too intense, his tone too earnest: Hook thought of Scavenger. The wild, honest fear he would feel, to be trapped in a place like that, and it was all he could do to keep his systems running normally. He forced a memory in, played it back multiple times until it maxed out his processing power and the dreadful fantasy was pushed aside: gentle hands, a kind voice. A promise.

“What about you?” he asked. Another chance. “You’ve exposed yourself just as much. More, since you can’t even sit out. What’s going to happen to you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Prowl snapped.

The deflection was exactly what Hook needed to banish the ugly thoughts from his mind entirely, because it did matter. The future he’d envisioned was staked on Prowl being alive, and he wasn’t about to let anyone risk that, least of all Prowl himself. Hook wanted to assure him of this, but his first instinct was to step forward and Prowl’s finger moved to the trigger.

“Don’t!” Prowl shouted.

Hook froze. His arms dropped to his sides and stayed there, where they wouldn’t be taken as a threat. He knew to be wary of a scared mech holding a gun, but for each moment that passed he became more aware of the fact that it hadn’t gone off.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Prowl,” Hook said. What were they supposed to do next? “We need to talk.”

“You’re a bunch of brutes who kill without remorse and decimate populations for fun,” Prowl said. “You forced yourselves into my mind and took whatever you wanted. What could you possibly want to talk about now?”

The same thing he’d been shown in the timestream, just phrased in a few more words. For as gorgeous as Prowl’s mind was, as endlessly fascinating and precise and meticulously designed, it wasn’t something Hook had been offered. He’d taken, grabbed for that beautiful thing, because that was how you got anywhere in the Decepticons: you grabbed the things you wanted and stepped on anyone who tried to keep you from them. The whole team had been operating on that hard-learned principle when they drew Prowl in that first time, not realizing that by doing so, they’d inadvertently been crushing the mech, too.

That had been the basis for their new team, and it was a structurally stable as a building without supports, a project with no plan. They’d jumped straight to the best parts and doomed the whole structure to fail.

“We won’t touch you again, if that’s what you want,” he said. He turned his palms toward Prowl, though kept them low. “We’ll give you space. We won’t get repaired. We—”

“Your combination ports?”

“Yeah.” Didn’t matter that he hadn’t gotten the rest of the team in on the idea, yet. He would find a way to keep that promise if it were what Prowl wanted.

“You would put Devastator to death,” Prowl said. The wording made Hook a bit queasy, too reminiscent of Scrapper, but he nodded. “How? What are you if you can’t combine?”

A team, Hook’s spark wanted to say, but he stopped himself. Something had been lost in translation when they’d tried that before, he was sure, and maybe specificity here would ease whatever steps lay ahead.

“You took my spot,” he said. “I used to be Devastator’s head. Mechs who never saw us combined assumed it had to be Scrapper, since he was the leader, but he was a leg. Bombshell had to reformat me, because it was easier than making you bulky enough to hold up everyone’s weight.”

Prowl’s optics narrowed, and even from this distance Hook swore he could hear his processor working, plugging in all the variables to try to figure out where this was headed. Hook sped up: he needed to be the one to say it out loud.

“We didn’t need Scrapper to be the head to be an effective leader, and we didn’t want you to take over from him because you became the new head. Where you fit in Devastator and your role on the team are two different things, and we want to keep you as the leader. Or whatever you want to call it. You don’t have to stay a part of Devastator to do that.”

Four million years ago, on a planet that existed permanently in the past, the Constructicons had been a nameless construction crew, its foreman an imperfect and brilliant mech. Scrapper had the gift of a clear vision and ability to maximize his crew’s innate abilities, and it was under his leadership that they found purpose among the lowest rungs of Cybertronian society. They’d become a team deep in the foundations of future skyscrapers and city blocks, and when the benefits of that spilled into their off hours, Hook had thought nothing would ever compare. Scrapper’s death should have signaled the end of a dream. Instead, it had opened a door to something strange and new, and though the other side was looking less and less like what they were leaving behind, Hook knew that they had to go ahead through.

Prowl’s optic was still narrowed, but his finger was back to the barrel of his gun.

“I said I would kill you if you came after me,” he said. “How do we trust each other if you can’t hold me to that?”

“We’re a team,” Hook answered. “I’m going to take back what I said earlier. We’re not going to ask for another chance to prove it, because we’d just screw it up again. This time, we don’t make it about proving anything. Megatron threw us all into this without a plan or nothing, because nobody thought we’d stick together this long. We need to sit down, figure out what we’re doing, and _then_ go after Springer or whoever. Once we’ve got our schematics down.”

He thought about turning his back on Prowl, a show of trust, but decided against it. There was a difference between trust and stupidity, and he liked to avoid being accused of the latter when possible.

The gun stayed pointed at him several seconds longer before, slowly, it lowered, pointed to the halfway point between them. Prowl’s optic was still fixed, but his doorwings no longer trembled.

“I’ll come with you to the present,” he said. “That’s the only guarantee I’ll make. I’m not promising to talk, or even that I won’t shoot the rest of the team on sight. Just that I will accompany you back through the timestream. Am I understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Hook said, and now he did turn around, following the tracks back to the tear in time. His footsteps were the only sound for a moment, before he heard the gentle crunch of another following him, their strides matching the prints in the snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments on chapter 1: Prowl wants to make up! :D  
> Me, nervously sipping tea: aha yep,,,,,,,


	7. Team

Prowl stumbled back through the rift, body swaying as he fought for equilibrium. It had been centuries since he’d last accessed the timestream, and he knew this would be the final time; he’d forgotten the extent of the effect it had on his frame. His spark was burning hot like an inferno within its chamber, the photons excited beyond their normal capacity, and his sensors were trying desperately to recalibrate while he still felt himself about to crash back to the floor.

Large hands caught him, shoulder and waist, and he leaned gratefully into the hold, letting it stabilize him while he waited for his vision to stop spinning.

“Easy, Prowl,” Long Haul murmured into his audial. “We’ve got you.”

He knew it was true. Though he was not well enough yet to see them, he spark still could feel the presence of the others around him, the beacons that had guided him back to his place in time. They were nearby, but not pressing, giving him space to come back on his own terms before they showered him with the worry he knew them to be feeling.

“I know,” he said, his voice rough with static. “I’ll be alright. Just give me a klik.”

“Need anything? Energon?” Sweet Scavenger, who Prowl knew could not stop himself entirely from offering aid, though he still kept his distance while he waited for the okay.

“I think I might purge it,” Prowl admitted. His entire frame felt delicate, hypersensitive as it readjusted to being back in a space physical bodies were meant to inhabit. Long Haul’s fingers, wide and blunt, were about all he could handle at the moment, though bit by bit the zip and sting of off-balance tactile sensors were fading.

“As soon as you’re up for it, we should probably get you somewhere cooler,” Mixmaster’s voice said. “You’re not overheating yet, but it’s a near thing, and if you can’t take in coolant, we’ll need to stay on top of it.”

“I’ll get the fan going.” Retreating footsteps accompanied Bonecrusher’s words. They were a good pair, Prowl mused, a solid unit that bolstered the cohesion of the team as a whole.

“Hey, you still with me, Prowl?” Long Haul asked, gently lifting and tilting Prowl so they were closer to facing each other. His tone, though calm, revealed a hint of anxiety that Prowl’s spark ached to soothe, a feeling greater than the waning discomfort left by the timestream.

Prowl cautiously onlined his optics and smiled at the sight of the familiar faceplate, the gentle glow of an optic band whose purple matched his own.

“Of course,” he said, “where else would I be?”

“None of that slag,” Long Haul chided, his tone light again. “You got this dopey look on your face. Needed to make sure you didn’t fry your processor or something.”

Prowl realized that he was smiling. It was something he did a lot now, though he hadn’t realized it before going back and seeing how foreign the concept had once been to him. He remembered the constant anger, the fear, the ever-present sense and expectation of betrayal, but in a distant way. Those were memories he’d learned how to suppress and dilute, so the old emotions didn’t infest the present and drive him to the same behaviors that had so nearly cost him this. He didn’t want to think about those things right now, so instead he focused on the feeling of Long Haul’s hands, the smell of so many living engines around him.

“Was just thinking,” he said.

“About?”

“The team.” He tossed his gaze aside to look on the assembled members and his optics landed on Hook, stood behind Mixmaster and Scavenger and watching Prowl was a nervousness that should have had no place here. Before he could think about what he was doing, he was wriggling to get free, and despite a concerned hesitation Long Haul did let him go. Prowl stumbled, reached out and let Scavenger be his support.

“Hook,” he got out, and at the request the named teammate stepped forward, taking Prowl’s arms when they were offered to help him keep his balance. Prowl leaned in, capturing Hook’s lips in a warm, soft kiss that tasted of iron and crackled with a sparkling twinge of electricity. A gentle glossa swept across his bottom lip and Prowl hummed, sinking into the feeling he’d steadfastly refused himself in the confines of the timestream.

The kiss lasted a klik, probably longer, and Prowl only broke it off because he felt himself starting to get dizzy again. Still, he stayed close and rested his forehelm against Hook’s, grateful when the other lowered his optic lights so they weren’t glaring into each other.

“Did I do alright?” Hook asked, quiet. It wasn’t a secret, what they’d done, but there was still something private about it, something shared only between the two of them. Prowl’s processor was still reeling from the revelation that Hook had managed to keep it a secret for all these years, trying to compute how many times he’d missed clues or near-admissions.

“You did perfectly,” Prowl said. “I’m so proud, my dear, and grateful.”

“Grateful?”

“You gave us this chance,” Prowl said. “Everyone has played a role in making it work, but you were the one who made it possible. I always knew that, but never the full extent of it.”

“I was just following your orders,” Hook said, though he was beaming under the praise. It was a gorgeous sight, and Prowl could not help stealing another kiss to that grin before he reclaimed his place.

“And I, yours,” he pointed out. “We make a good team.”

“We do,” Hook agreed.

“We all do?”

Prowl turned to look at Scavenger, still standing nearby with a posture that said he wanted to be involved but didn’t want to invade their moment. If his frame had been up to it, Prowl might have laughed, but instead he let go of Hook with one hand to reach out to Scavenger, drawing him into their huddle. He leaned over to kiss Scavenger, too, grateful for though unable to reciprocate his enthusiastic nibbling.

“The snoggers are at it again,” Long Haul complained. Prowl broke off the kiss to smirk up at their teammate, who stared down on them with his arms crossed and posture unimpressed. “Go easy on him, Scav. Don’t need him offlining because we literally blew his processor out.”

“If you’re so jealous, Long Haul, you could have gotten that mouth with your frame overhaul like I suggested,” Prowl pointed out.

“Nah, somebody on this team’s gotta maintain some dignity,” Long Haul said as his stance relaxed and he stepped forward, doing the best he could to wrap the three of them in an outer layer of hug. The closeness was a little much for Prowl, but it wasn’t uncomfortable yet and he knew, despite whatever fronts they put up, they needed assurance that he was okay.

To perhaps everyone’s benefit, it didn’t last too long.

“Hey, hey, this is the exact opposite of what I said,” Mixmaster said, stepping forward to break up the impromptu cuddle until it was just Hook and Prowl hanging onto each other. “Prowl’s temperature is rising. Hook, get him in front of that fan before he melts into a puddle of slag.”

“Sure thing, Mix,” Hook said, looping an arm around Prowl’s waist so they could walk over to the cooled pocket of the cave they’d set up ahead of time. Scattered around were a few stacks of extra energon, a basic med kit, and a few more heavy-duty supplies in case they’d needed to hold him together while they rushed to a proper hospital. Bonecrusher was standing by their industrial fan, adjusting its angle while Prowl sat down so he was in the center of the blast. Despite the noise and the extra sensory information getting force through his doorwings, the cool air felt wonderful against his hot plating, and he allowed his optics to dim a moment as he savored it.

“You good there, Prowl?” Hook asked from above. He’d stayed by Prowl’s side but hadn’t sat down yet.

“Could be better. Here.” Prowl reached up to lightly tug on Hook’s hand. As soon as his teammate was sitting, Prowl leaned over to cuddle against his side, grateful both for the contact and the support of a body much more stable than his own. Hook’s arm wrapped around his back, gently squeezing his shoulder.

“Aw, so sweet,” Mixmaster said, standing off to the side so he wouldn’t be in the way of the fan. There was a glint in his optic that Prowl knew too well.

“Are you taking image captures?”

“Just figured Springer will want proof when we tell him that we got you safely back from the timestream, then lost you again because you couldn’t keep your hands off Hook.” The mech whose rescue mission Prowl had framed as a bounty hunt all those years ago had asked to be kept informed of their status.

“Can you blame him?” Hook asked, though he started to shift away, something Prowl could not abide by.

“My temperature is dropping,” he pointed out. He leaned more of his weight on Hook, preventing him from moving unless he wanted to risk dropping Prowl on the ground. “Maybe not as quickly as if Hook weren’t here, but it’s not at such a critical level for that to be an issue.”

Mixmaster looked like he had more argument in him, but then Bonecrusher appeared behind him, wrapping his arms around Mix’s midsection while his chin came to rest on his shoulder.

“It’s okay, Mixer,” he said, so soft Prowl knew it was only intended for Mixmaster; that the rest of them could hear it was merely incidental of the cave’s acoustics. “We got him back and he’s safe. The worst part’s over.”

Prowl saw Mixmaster minutely lean back into the touches, his optics flickering as Bonecrusher’s hands brushed along delicate seams, playing at the wires underneath. It was an attractive scene, but Prowl knew that if he spent too long watching his frame would start to overheat again. He turned his attention to Hook, who he wasn’t surprised to find was looking at him in turn.

“What?” he asked, feeling playful.

“Just glad this worked out, Prowl,” Hook said, expression relaxed but a little more serious. “And, uh, sorry that I kept this a secret for so long. What with you trusting us and all.”

Prowl’s processor scrambled for something to say to that. To buy himself time, he kissed Hook again, offlining his optics so he could focus on the feeling of soft lips, smooth glossa. In the background, Bonecrusher and Mixmaster’s hushed conversation had devolved into pleasured moans and hums, and nearby the increasing pitch of busy engines said that Scavenger and Long Haul were finding their own fun. Later, once they were back in their own ship and Prowl didn’t feel like his frame was at risk of rattling apart, he was going to drag all of them into their berth and savor each one, their unique tastes, delighted voices and rumbling engines.

He’d forced himself to forget how willing he’d been to lose it all, how he’d been ready to sacrifice their lives as well as his own in his reckless rescue mission. The ache of four million years of exhaustion had still been heavy in his spark, and he’d hoped that some part of the plan, getting back at the Decepticons for what had been done to him, saving Springer from the timestream, letting himself extinguish in the attempt, would be the thing to finally ease it. He’d refused to know then what he did now, and he pressed deeper into the kiss, hoping Hook would understand it as his own apology.

When they broke apart, Prowl did not immediately online his optics, but lay his head on Hook’s shoulder, letting the familiar frame hold him up as it had for so long.

“We’re a team,” he said, which he now knew meant, in language the Decepticons had used to keep from sounding too much like squishy, softsparked Autobots, _I love you_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaa it's done! Thank you again crimson, this week was super fun!
> 
> A point I made in the comments and I think is worth reiterating here: it's supposed to be left ambiguous whether the team combines again. Hook decides that's he's willing to make the concession if it's something Prowl wants, which isn't a possibility he'd been able to conceive of before. Through the end of the war, their team became synonymous with Devastator, to the point that their roles as his components became the means by which they assigned themselves value and managed their relationship. They're going to have to learn how to communicate without using combination as a crutch if they want to build something real with Prowl, so it's the _willingness_ to sacrifice combining, not the sacrifice itself, that is significant.
> 
> And maybe through that, Prowl decides that he trusts them enough to link up again. That's up to your interpretation :)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on [Tumblr](https://libermachinae.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/libermachinae) :)


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